Another Man's Treasure

You know how the saying goes...'One man's trash is another man's treasure.' Well, it's treasure hunting season in my neighborhood as there are a lot of houses up for sale and a lot of families packing up and moving out. One such house falls on a main road that I am on daily. They had moved this past weekend and I saw they set out 10 plastic, white patio chairs on the curb. I thought about going back at night and picking those up since we don't have much patio furniture. They weren't broken - just a little dirty - nothing a good hosing couldn't take care of. But the thought was only that - a thought...because someone had beaten me to it. I just didn't think it would be right to drive up to the house, with the movers and family right there, and load up my SUV with their discarded lawn chairs - I would feel like giving them money for it or something.

Flash forward to Monday - on my way home from work, I passed the house and saw that they had an SUV in the garage loading up miscellaneous items that didn't make it onto the moving truck. On my way home from dance class, later that evening, I saw that by the curbside, not only was there a lot of trash, but a lot of cleaning supplies like dusters, brooms, mops, etc. I guess if you're starting out in a new place, you want to start out with new supplies. My only thought, while looking at their trash was whether I could dump one of my cardboard boxes with their trash since they probably called the trash collectors to let them know they had some big trash items. (It never happened.)

During my morning commute, when I was about to approach the house on my drive, I saw a man, on the opposite side of the road, walking, and holding a broom, a mop and a duster. I had to smile and chuckle...wow! I know their trash seemed pretty paltry, in terms of reusable items but cleaning supplies? Is this man too poor to go out and buy new mops and dusters for his own home and has to resort to using another family's used ones? I mean, you don't know where it's been. Those items could've been used to clean up poop or puke...you don't know.

But I guess this was of no consequence to this morning walker - he saw a treasure and he took it back home to his treasure chest!