Friday, July 06, 2007

Musing on the CabinDwelling Life: Part VII, Yard Art

Stockpile of handy items or junk yard art? You decide.

It's been a long while, my peoples, has it not? Besides clam digging, gardening, beer-drinking and cultivating my farmer tan, damn, I've been working crazy hours. I finally had three days off in a row this week and spent most of them working at home. And, I must add, waaaaaaaaaah.

Bong hits for Jesus.

So, I decided that I'd had it with the totally junky look of the yard and borrowed Flic's pickup truck for a few dumpster runs. Gone now is the accumulation of mattresses in the driveway, along with the unsalvageable plywood, assorted wiring found under the cabin, the busted up garbage cans and rolled up carpet scraps.

My greenie friends can relax, not everything went to the dumpster. I gifted a 1970s era Fluke meter and an oscilloscope that I found under the cabin to an electronics enthusiast (nice term for geek, isn't it?) friend who thought them a great new toy.

However, I found myself in a unique situation when it came to the pile of cabinet doors stacked next to the cabin. Cabindwelling folk are, shall we say, thrifty. Scavenging is widely practiced, sometimes of entire buildings at once, as is its close cousin, dumpster diving. One of the previous occupants of my cabin had found 10 perfectly useable cabinet doors at the transfer station. Useable for what? I don't know, the kitchen cabinets already have doors.

But they were there, waiting, just in case we had an emergency requiring the application of cabinet doors.

Call me wasteful, call me uncreative, but it was time for the cabinet doors to return from whence they came. Back to the transfer they went, a little more weatherbeaten but still in perfectly good useable condition. I hope the nice people who picked them up give them a good home.

5 comments:

Ishmael said...

Bong Hits 4 Jesus!

Hey, if I can get a blogging seminar during next April's Alaska Press Club gathering in Anchorage, would you go?

CabinDweller said...

Well, what the hell, why not?

You buy the first round of Dickel.

Ishmael said...

I'll be happy to buy. Think you can bring Deirdre down, too?

My Ishy e-mail is fishkillinfool@yahoo.com.

subarctic mama said...

I've had the same impulse to hang onto my hopeful collections of possible construction materials forever. Sometimes it's just time for them to go.

CabinDweller said...

Now if I could only rid myself of my overly optimistic construction impulse.

And Ish, I suspect Deirdre is already heading down to Press Club, being a big time publisher and all. :)