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Next door bought the house to renovate and OH asked if he could jump in the skip and have a look we got a new sofa, basically brand new carpet for the van, a dining table, some fire alarms (realised the other day that ours have been broken since we moved in ) and a load of lovely brass antique drawer handles. The things people throw away!
Anyone else found any skip treasure lately?

nice treasure

You did well there! Always nabbing skip treasure, mostly furniture. Over the years I've found a foot stool that I recovered with nice fabric, shelving units, a bed side cabinet, a woven wicker set of drawers for the bathroom, directors chairs, drying maiden, a large houseplant, huge patches of real red leather (which will become a bag one day when I can get down to my mates to use the industrial sewing machine), solid oak boards and other wood which was a god send for use in the allotment and the house. People are always dumping white goods and furniture including beds and couches at the back of our flats. We have a free council service here where they'll come and collect it and recondition it to sell dirt cheap yet they don't use it so things get ruined in the rain. It annoys me.

Annoying that they do that. I couldn't understand why next door didn't just freecycle or even sell the stuff from the house, they bought it a year ago and it's just been sitting there full of brand new/quality antique skip-bound furniture (they were whinging how expensive skips were as they've had to have about 5 of them to take everything away) it was the builders who let us have a look through the stuff. But then, can't complain as we got a load of free stuff, all that usable stuff thoughtlessly going to landfill still gripes on me though !

Nice finds by the way

loads of dirt come in very handy for my new raised bed
loads of wood that made new front for my compost bins
tumble dryer drum now in planter for my jasmin
and a washing machine drum that me huckleberry and gojio berry are in
it all helps out

Had a quality headboard that I recovered: Computer chair: Wood & lots of other stuff I have forgotten.
When my neighbour moved in with no garden furniture, I gave her two folding chairs & told her there was a patio table in a skip down the road but she couldn't be bothered to get it.

got some new bricks recently from a council skip, perfect for small projects. such a shame these things are thrown away

James

After about 2 years of nagging from my better half I ordered a skip to declutter the sheds and a bedroom that had been used as a junk / store room. My two lads and I started to fill the skip. Mostly complete junk and by lunchtime had it nearly full with only two sheds cleared. But I had a cunning stunt up my sleeve

Thanks to past experiences of hiring skips, I now know all about the importance of 'Stock Rotation'. We put all of the old plastic wrappings, polystyrene wrapping, broken flower pots etc etc at the back of the skip and put all of the stuff that I knew was worth something to somebody at the front in full view of the passing traffic (we live in the country but on a road that connects two towns). I was fully confident that we'd have a few 'takers' and we could then use that space to put more rubbish into.

We put a pine tall-boy right at the front (we had no takers from an ad on Gumtree). We put it in the skip in full view at 6.45pm. The three of us had a bet as to how long it would take to be 'disappeared'. I said it'd be gone by 8pm, one lad said 9pm and one 9.30pm. We were all wrong. Four minutes is all the time it took to disappear

We carried on in the same vein, putting 'good' stuff to the front and it all went. We couldn't sell the stuff despite trying but obviously somebody thought they'd have a use for it. A pine desk, a computer table, the tall-boy, two bedside cabinets, lamps, curtains, clothes, books, toys (mostly broken) as well as stuff I can't remember all went.

I got rid of stuff we no longer needed (or had room for) and others benefitted from it. Luckily nobody put anything into the skip, only took it away. Result all round I'd say.

what about freecycle, have you tried that? Also charity shops are good, my local one here will even pick up bigger items like furniture

James

My neighbours [ and i mean the whole 32 in the street] now knock on my door BEFORE they order skips to see if I can use whatever it is they are going to "skip".

Over the last 4 years I've saved 8 skips being ordered.

Yes Big Al but what does the wife have to say on the fact that she now can't move around your house?

I've found quite a few dining chairs, Mirrors, a bedside cabinet, shards of mirror (I will use for a paraboloid solar oven), and, most excitingly, two pewter and resin pirate figurines! Still packaged in their cardboard boxes and polystyrene, although I can't find any similar ones online to find out how much they might be worth... We're about to charity shop them, so at least the charity might make a bit of money from their sale!

Cligareen - What a great idea!!

hmm, skip finds of mine include: drain pipes, electrical wire, spotlight, loads of wood, bathroom tiles (for the floor of our chicken houses) drawers (nest boxes)

I'm also addicted to Freagle (freecycle) and will knock on doors to ask about stuff left outside, and our goat & pig pens are part fenced by pallets free from a local factory!

James, we don't have a freecycle scheme operating here (Ireland) or anything like it. There are a few charity shops around and we do take stuff there occasionally but apparantly some of the 'charity' shops are franchises who donate only a small percentage of the takings to the actual charity and keep the rest as profit. I'm not sure which are the genuine charity shops (Oxfam are genuine but we don't have one near us).

Anyway, I cut out some road miles by doing my own version of freecycle, right by the side of the road.

my friends down the road have given us a shed today!

Took us an hour and a half to walk back & forth with all the bits, but worth it - going to build pig palace mark 2!