Hello, people of steem, welcome to my page!
I recently read a post about reusing and repairing things rather than throwing them away, and it got me to thinking about some of the stuff that I do in that way. I think that most of us know that most new consumer goods are made with what is called built in obsolescence. Stuff is made to be used for a few years and then thrown away when something goes wrong with it rather than repairing it. With a lot of newer stuff, it tends to cost as much or more to have something repaired than it does to replace it. TVs and lawn mowers are good examples of that. Most people wouldn't have any idea of how to repair most of this kind of stuff, so they would have to have the repair work done for them. Repair work is expensive, as most of us are aware of, and parts can be expensive also. If you're mechanically inclined, you can probably fix most problems with that old lawn mower, as long as the engine isn't worn out.
Another area that I see interest in is reusing stuff that other people get rid of. Sometimes they get rid of it because it doesn't work and can't be repaired or is too expensive to repair, and sometimes they get rid of it because they don't want it anymore. There's an old saying, "one person's trash is another person's treasure".
Most people who know me personally know that I'm somewhat of a scrounger. I don't go out of my way to find stuff in the neighborhood, but if I drive by something on the curb that looks usable for my purposes, I'll stop and pick it up. I once got a free snowblower that way. The person had a "free" sign on it, and when I brought the trailer around to pick it up, the guy told me that he got tired of working on it and bought a new one. It turned out that the carburetor was in dire need of a good cleaning. The motor from that snowblower is now on my rototiller.
I've discovered a good source of occasional treasures here in town that I now check every few days. The city has a scrap metal bin that they have set out for the locals to get rid of their scrap metal stuff. It gets filled mostly with metal junk, tin cans, and stuff like that, but every now and then, there's something good in the bin. There was a complete Honda 400 engine in the bin last week, but it was way too heavy for me to lift. I know someone else got it because it wasn't in the bin a couple of days later. I've gotten a few oddball things out of the bin this summer and a few interesting things, like this cast iron charcoal grill that someone got rid of.
It has a clean out door on each end of the ash pan area, which can also control the airflow to the charcoal.
A look at the inside.
I've also scrounged up 2 pieces of aluminum sheet for my travel trailer repair project from the metal bin. Apparently someone was scrapping out a trailer and bringing the aluminum skin to the bin to get rid of it.
This is one of the pieces. It has a couple of creases in it, but no holes that would make it hard to use.
It was too long to put on the back of my trailer so I trimmed off the ends of it to get a good fit. Then I test fitted it on the back of my old trailer, it fits pretty well now. This solves one of my repair problems without having to buy any aluminum material. Without this piece, I would have had to buy some aluminum soffit material and make that fit.
My most recent find has been some decorative blocks for use around the yard. I got these from a local "landfill wanted" place. People bring all kinds of stuff to get rid of it such as piles of dirt, broken cement, concrete building materials, stuff that's not garbage. I went there to get rid of a couple of bags of used cat litter and found a fair amount of usable cement blocks, a couple of good pavers, and these decorative blocks.
This is one of the piles of rubble at the site.
You can see a few unbroken cement blocks in that picture. I use blocks like these to stack for things like my rain barrel platforms. Free blocks that are unbroken are always better than having to buy them, especially for the kind of projects that I use them for. I just used some of those scrounged blocks to build a platform for another rain barrel. I have a few extras for the next project.
I also got a nice pile of decorative blocks from that rubble pile.
I'm not sure what we're going to do with them yet, but I know they'll be put to use somewhere in the yard. We already have a couple of ideas for them.
I think that scrounging can be a useful thing for a homesteader. When you're homesteading, it seems like you always need building material for some project or another. Chickens don't care if you build their coop with used lumber, or pallets.
Well, I guess that's all I have for this post. Thanks for stopping by to check it out!
