One Man's Trash

I imagine pretty much everyone, upon reading or hearing the phrase, "One man's trash," finishes it with the words, "is another man's treasure." Perhaps nothing makes this more obvious than the days leading up to the first Tuesday of each month in North Prairie.

The first Tuesday of the month is Large Item Pickup in our little village. People put all manner of "trash" down by the road in the days leading up to the pickup. This is rapidly followed by people who drive slowly through the village looking for piles of trash to pick through. 

I have been on a "Fall Cleaning" binge over the past several weeks. I have largely finished a major cleaning out of both the garage and basement. It's amazing how much stuff accumulates in these places over the years; stuff that we probably once thought we would use again or would have some important sentimental value in the future. Time gives us a totally new perspective on such stuff. 

We have created several piles as we cleaned our way through the garage and basement. There's the Save pile for those things that we truly want to keep. There's the Goodwill pile for those things that might truly have value to someone else; and then there's the Trash pile for the things that will make their way to the street for Large Item Pickup. 

The Trash pile seems to grow at an exponential pace; causing me to wonder why we really ever kept much of this stuff in the first place. 

I took last Friday off to use up a remaining vacation day. This allowed me to take Sadie to the vet and work on the basement. Diane and I began the process of hauling items from the Trash pile to the street during the afternoon. The pile had not been down there for an hour before someone pulled up in a pickup to begin the process of picking through our Trash. Based on what disappeared from the pile, I can only assume that they were looking for any metal they could take to the scrap yard.

We continued building the pile Saturday morning. Again, it took only minutes before someone was picking through the pile seeking their Treasure. Who knows what will remain of the pile by the time the truck actually arrives on Tuesday morning. Much of our Trash having been magically transformed into someone else's Treasure.