Sunday, July 17, 2011

One man's Trash is another's Treasure

In todays modern world we live in a throw away culture. If it breaks, buy a new one. Thanks to convenience and large corporations like Walmart we have adopted a mentality of "this will do, for now" instead of "this quality will really last". I admit like most I fall into the common category of those who replace instead of fix. However, when you are living on a budget and have a husband who loves projects you start to think outside the box and jump on the opportunity to take one man's trash and turn it into a treasure.



Like most apartment buildings ours has a trash and recycling room and in a transient city building with people moving pretty frequently or just replacing stuff you never know what you may find down there. Our first big find was a space heater. It was just getting cool in Sydney and Chris and I were taking down the recycling and saw a space heating sitting in the room against the wall and next to it the box of an upgraded model of a new space heater. We both kind of gave each other a look that said "do you think that thing is any good?" Then decided hey its worth a try, we might as well see if it works and if not we'll just return it no loss.

We loaded our prized possession in the elevator glancing around as if its mirrored walls were judging us. Then to our delight when safely in the comfort of our chilly home, it worked. The middle setting didn't work so it was all or nothing as far as heat goes, but hey it was certainly better than nothing. It's been going strong for a couple of months now.



After that, on another occasion, we acquired a computer monitor and some useful cords. Then last night, we returned to our place to find a giant 43' inch flat screen tv sitting on the floor of our living room. I shouted in an excited squeal to our flat mates, where did this thing come from? The reply of course was "the trash room." They said it didn't seem to work. Chris saw this as an opportunity for a project and immediately started fiddling with it and searching the internet to determine what may be wrong. He came up late to bed and said "I think I can fix this thing." 



So today he took a trip to the electronic store and spent next to nothing (a womping $4) on the required parts and spent an hour tops fixing it up (most of this time was spent on the millions of unnecessary screws involved). Then to my amazement we had ourselves a new TV! 


Never underestimate to usefulness of having a having a handy-man around! I feel so blessed. Who knows we will find next. This gives a whole new meaning to idea of recycling.


1 comment:

  1. That is excellent! In France, we have one day per month where people can put whatever trash they want on the street and we've gotten lots of furniture out of it. I'm guilty of tossing some pretty decent stuff because we didn't know how to repair it.. maybe I should learn!

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