That's why I prefer to think of myself as a Recessionista, rather than a Fashionista. Yes, I love fashion, but my ideas are adapted to the single premise of looking fabulous for LESS. That means often waiting a long time for that perfect wardrobe item, purse or piece of jewelry to be marked waaaaaayy down. Or be given to you. Or be free.
In other words? Sometimes ya just gotta trash pick a microwave.
Every morning, I drive to the nearby bank branch to deposit the shop's previous day's earnings. We work in Worthington, which has some pretty nice, older homes. I drive through just such a neighborhood to get to the bank. Well tended lawns and clean, updated houses dot my drive.
This morning was trash day, and at one house there was a huge trash pile. My take was that they must have been redoing the inside, and there at the curb was a very nice, stainless steel, microwave. I drove past it, then thought, 'hmmmm. I wonder if that works?'
I stopped and turned around. I got out and grabbed that (surprisingly heavy) microwave, and put it in my back seat. What did I have to lose? It was free, and if it didn't work, it would go right back into the trash.
We had been using an ancient 80's microwave at work, that my husband actually trash picked probably over 20 years ago. Nasty, but functional. We were waiting for it to go out, due to it's age, but it remained good enough to heat our soups and frozen dinners for lunch.
Michael can usually fix anything, and if he CAN'T fix something, he robs parts to use for other things. I knew that he would share my vision and see possibilites in my trash picked treasure :)
The result? This microwave works just fine, and was amazingly clean. We further scrubbed it up, plugged it in and threw away the old microwave. Talk about recycling and saving the planet!
I do have my limits for this kind of thing. I am NOT a dumpster diver. You don't have to worry about running into me at the back of Kroger one day, feet straight up in the air. I can count on one hand the number of times I have reclaimed a trash pile treasure. Most of what I've found has been furniture, since some people lack vision (or the means to haul it away to Goodwill).
That being said, don't waste your time reading this and say, 'Ew, yucky.' If you do, you reveal yourself to have a LACK of vision...........you silly :X
Vision can be applied in so many areas of life. When you're just starting out and you want to buy your first place, you COULD bankrupt yourself to buy the biggest, nicest home possible. Then, your quality of life goes down as you struggle to make your mortgage payments, not to mention buy groceries! Or, you could do as my first husband and I did, and buy a tiny little starter home that needed a gigantic amount of work just to move in, but when we sold it 4 years later, we made a nice profit on it and could apply that to a bigger house. We had the VISION to look past the dirt, metallic wallpaper from the '70's on the ceiling, and high gloss pepto pink paint in the living room, and see a diamond in the rough. We never regretted buying that house and putting the effort and money into it that we did. People made snarky comments to us, but we were undaunted. We were also rewarded in the end.
You want a nice car but lack the funds to buy a new one? Buy the nicest used car you can, and keep it clean. That makes a huge difference. You want a beautiful wardrobe but can't shop at the upscale stores? Look for those brands resale--they are THERE and more prevalent than you think. It just takes VISION.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go heat up the delicious potato-ham soup my hubby made.......in our 'new' work microwave.
'Ewww' microwave
'New' microwave
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