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Your neighbor's trash. It's stunning what I find and fix, refurbish, repurpose or sell. Had a friend that used to cruise her hood on trash day, her and her husband would load the truck, sell it back to 'em on a Saturday garage sale. 12-14 hours biweekly work, ~$400 every other weekend.
My wife's friends dumpster dive at Walmart, though I question how that's possible. Most big box stores make that impossible. Dunno. In any case, it's wild what these stores chunk out. If Lowe's would let me, I'd haul home a pickup full every week.
On that note, never bring back mattresses, anything upholstered, or anything else that has a lot of unsealed cracks/gaps. Way too big a risk of introducing bed bugs into your home.
So many people just dump seemingly nice mattresses/sofas etc. out on the curb. They're obviously not going to label these things as infested with bed bugs for a scavenger's benefit and alert the whole neighborhood to their shame. Do not take these items. It is not worth the potential nightmare you're setting yourself up for.
I have a pro tip for mattresses! Thrown it down in your driveway, take a box knife and strip it to the bare metal springs. Boom! You now have a plant trellis. First try only took me 20 minutes.
Saw a posh resale store that took twin mattress springs, sprayed 'em black, hung vertically and spaced 2' apart over a standing flower bed. Now sure what the plant was but it sure looked cool.
Trying it for the first time this year on the ferns and blackberries on the side of the house. Already have a solid start!
People think I'm some sort of TV repair wizard but it's very easy to fix up dumpster TVs if you have a little patience and space. Broken TVs fall into two categories - broken screen or broken board (doesn't turn on, error screens, flickering). Stick to more popular models and when you find a broken screen, take the board and note the model. When you find a broken board of the same model, just swap it. It usually really is that easy. You can work in the opposite direction too and collect good screens waiting for good boards, but that starts to take up a lot of space quick because you're storing whole TVs at that point.
You will also inexplicably find a fully working 55" TV sitting at the dumpster 10% of the time.
My 55" was thrown out by a neighbor, power issues. $8 in eBay capacitors fixed it, but I did something wrong and shorted it while hanging, lost the magic smoke.
Fine. For $60 I got a new board off eBay. Still have a unit in my bedroom waiting to fix.
People moving and can't be bothered / don't have the time for FB marketplace or similar
Americans: we so poor, every country is ripping us off!