Adventures in Happy Homes

I am a bit of a packrat sometimes. I tend to keep things that I no longer want, because I think that they could have a happy home with someone else, if only I could find that person and give them that thing at the right time. Well, today we had two cases of our stuff finding happy homes. It was a matter of the person who needs it being in the right place at the right time.

First, we had torn down our shed. It was sagging and scary and needed to go. Also, by "we," I actually mean Jeff. Anyhow, he had gotten this really big dumpster. It was so big that it had to be parked out on the street and we had to get a permit. The city let us borrow some warning flashers that we put on either side of the dumpster. I helped with this a little bit, but it was mostly Jeff and our friend Dave who disposed of all the shed residue in the dumpster. Then, this morning, some sketchy-looking men in an ancient pickup truck happened to be driving by and stopped. They salvage metal, so they picked all the siding and the chain link fence pieces we had placed in the dumpster. We were happy to let them have it. Otherwise it would have just ended up in a landfill.

Then, Jeff was chipping in the back yard when our neighbor brought a guy around back who asked him about the mattresses we had put in the dumpster. It was a bed that we had been given by my grandma when we got married, but it was a set of twin mattresses and it was old and kind of uncomfortable so we decided to get rid of it and buy a new bed once we moved. Anyhow, the guy asked Jeff if he could pay him for the mattresses in the dumpster. Jeff said he could just have them, because we were just throwing them away anyhow. Jeff escorted him back to the front yard through the garage, showing him all the stuff we have in the garage for a garage sale and asking him if he was interested in any of it. The man said he'd take it all, and gave Jeff a wad of bills. Then he told Jeff what he was getting all this stuff for: His church was taking in a bunch of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and they needed furniture and food for these people. Jeff handed him back the money and told him he could just take the stuff. He also packed up a bunch of cans of food for him, and offered him anything he wanted from our freezer. It was great because we still have a lot of frozen food that we won't be able to use up in time. Now these people who really need it will be able to use the food and we don't have to waste it.

The guy is coming back tomorrow to pick up another load of stuff. I am so happy that our stuff has found a happy home. As they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure, and that certainly applies here.