dumpster diving

[fflo]

Well, we didn't actually dive into any of the dumpsters---they were heaped too high for that. But yesterday squirrelykat and I did some serious reuse reclaiming recon in the trash from the departing U. Mich. crowd, apparently some of whom are just as well off and wasteful as we imagine. Her big find: a Prada purse. Mine? Hmmm... I like my new towels & shelves, and I'm glad to have the free cleaning supplies, but the top scores are (1) the deco repro clock (I like me some clocks), (2) the two very nice wooden coat hangers (two of this hanger, in fact:



), and (3) the nearly-full 3-lb can of Maxwell House. My bean grinder bit the dust recently, so it's not even disappointing that my free coffee is already ground.

The roller blades and snowboarding shoes weren't my size. And I already have a Swiffer---a shame, cuz there were plenty of those to be had.

Comments

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I doubt seriously that anybody would "mess up" something just to throw it out---particularly anything stealthy that I couldn't pick up by opening the can & looking at and smelling the coffee. And it's the evidence of my senses I'm going with here, not the word of the guy by the trash. Stale, no big deal. Too stale, I'd toss it, and it would belong in the garbage---but at least I'd recycle the big metal can.

There's a lot of usable food in the trash; I'm fortunate not to have to depend on it regularly myself, but much is wasted. sprig5 gave me a book once that was a memoir of sorts by a guy who'd lived on the streets. Useful & surprising info about edible items in the trash.

Part of why I want to be less squeamish about such things is a growing association I have of that squeamishness with what I think of as the deluded American cultural sense of the "safe" as the homogenized, McDonald's-franchise-predictable-"known", properly contained in layers of guaranteeing "tamper-proof" packaging---counting on some kind of corporate/governmental/legal sanctioning as "pure" and within the "expiration" date more than we count on our own ways of determining what's safe, and buying the idea that boogeymen are out there trying to poison us. To go along with that kind of thing unthinkingly is to participate in and further part of the capitalist/marketing agenda that is happy to divide us from each other & keep us scared and locked away in our separate houses with our individual lawn mowers and laundry machines, getting our world view and our folklore, such as it is, from our TVs, and telling us our own ways of knowing what is safe to eat, for instance, aren't to be trusted. Know what I mean?