Furniture shopping - island style

Twice a year the town's refuse company, Seagull Sanitation, does a free large item pickup. On that date residents can put anything big - couches, chairs, tables, dressers, ovens, beds, etc. - out on the the curb and during the day a truck comes by and takes it away for free.  This is a very good thing.  Considering that it usually costs money to dispose of anything at the town dump, plus the hassle and/or expense of just getting it to the dump...like I said, a good thing.

For me, this is a chance to work on clearing out the decades worth of old, broken furniture stuffed into the storage and crawlspace area under the house.  Sometimes it's also a way for me to dispose of furniture left behind by vacating tenants.  This happens more frequently than you'd believe. Seriously. That's what happened two years ago and it looked like this:

  

Yes, that is a sleeper sofa, a desk, a table, chairs, a dresser, a small mattress, and a wardrobe. Sheesh!  All of it carried out to the curb by a couple of strong young lads from a local construction company.  They barely broke a sweat and walked away with a little extra cash in their pockets.

What I put out last night for today's large item pickup was a much smaller haul.  But the fun in putting it out the night before is in seeing what's actually still there in the morning.  Or if one happens to be up early in the morning, one could (theoretically) observe islanders cruising the streets, "shopping" the piles of discarded furniture.  I'm not saying I mind this - in fact, it makes me very happy to see that my trash could be someone else's treasure!  It's a far better result than just adding to the already overflowing city dump. And since many of us zip around town in golf carts - it's kinda fun to see how much or how large an item can be transported!