I got up early this morning to take out my own trash, and took a stroll up and down the alley. The nice house that’s always full of shitty tenants had an enormous pile of trash in the parking area, and it turned out to be a gold mine. A dozen bath towels, several throw blankets, a comforter, a set of orange sheets, and loads of white t-shirts (which make the best paining and printmaking rags). I also walked away with a couple dozen sample jars of house paint, and had I been willing to dig I suspect I could have turned up more; I swear the landlords must have sampled every dark grayed-brown and off-white Sherwin-Williams offers. I can always find a use for it.

Further up the alley, I got more towels, another small dog bed, and an assortment pack of nail polish–not all of it wearable colors, but I’m sure I’ll find a craft use for it.

Oh, and I did find one book–an accounting textbook. But that is the one and lonely-only book for this year.

I hadn’t planned on taking a stroll in the neighborhood, but got my handcart and bungee cords and went out anyway. I scored more bath towels, a couple of throw blankets, and another pair of cushions off the back of a couch (this time in a tan cotton twill I can live with).

So the Humane Society will be making out like bandits this year. Once I’d dumped everything out on the basement floor and saw how much I’ve dragged home all in one spot, I had a real “Holy shit!” moment.

There may be a few stray bits put out tonight, but Student Moveout 2015 has effectively come to an end. Now it’s time to get all of this stuff dried, bagged, and taken to where it can do the most good.

Today was wonderfully rainy and cool–but also windy. Reddit’s Seattle sub is packed with pics of downed trees and branches, including part of a huge chestnut not far from my house. And speaking of chestnuts, the downed seed pods are everywhere, thanks to the wind. They’re also unusually large, perhaps due to this summer’s heat.

So today I opted to stay in and hang out on the couch with a book, coffee, and cats, but I did venture out briefly this evening to see if the departing students had left me anything good.

From the nice house with always-shitty tenants three doors down, I scored several bath towels in excellent condition, which will go to the Humane Society. They’re also getting a small dog bed, a fleece throw blanket, a cotton bath mat, and a couple more beach towels, all scavenged from other dumpsters and trash cans in my own alley.

I also dragged home a huge trove of men’s clothing, all in excellent shape, from one of the houses two doors up. The young men living there left a huge pile of cast-offs and garbage in their driveway, and I’m sure if I did more digging I’d find more worth taking. But it was getting dark, the rain was pelting down, and everything was soaked (including me), making it hard enough to wrestle with the mess I did take home. I had to make two trips to haul everything in, and once I had it all in my basement and hung up to dry I didn’t feel like going back out again.

I don’t have a use for any of this men’s clothing (except the cotton t-shirts), so it’s all going to Goodwill. Normally, I don’t take anything I can’t use immediately, because then I end up with a house full of stuff sitting idle. But I’ve got a van booked for later in the month, and a Goodwill donations run is part of my plans, so I’ll bag it all up and send it along. Otherwise, most of it was going to end up in a landfill, because once discarded clothing gets wet it gets heavy, and my fellow pickers can’t be bothered with it. Not that I can blame them–I only had to lug tonight’s haul about 150 feet, and that was enough.

I also got a comforter and a duvet cover from that pile, and a set of burgundy sheets that bleed like mad when wet (one white towel is now pink). The comforter might end up as animal bedding, just like the one I got last week, or I may just Goodwill it.

Other small stuff includes a striped cotton scarf and a flip-top water bottle in an excruciatingly ugly shade of ’70s avocado green. I never buy water bottles; not when I live near a college campus and there are so many of them lost or discarded.

I’ve also picked up some bits of lumber, mostly in the form of Ikea bed slats, which are very useful for small projects. But yesterday’s best score were the denim back cushions from a discarded sofa. The couch itself was a wreck, and the seat cushions were grungy and food-stained, but the back cushions were definitely salvageable. I toted them home, unzipped them, dumped the stuffing into trash bags, and threw the denim covers in the washer. They’re now in the dryer, and once I’ve re-stuffed them I’ll use them on the daybed in the living room that serves as my couch.

I scored big on t-shirts, too; enough to wash an entire large load of them.

Tomorrow should be the last big push to finish clearing out, and Monday is trash day, so I’ll go out scavenging again tomorrow, weather be damned.

Oh, and one notable thing: So far this year, I haven’t found any books at all. I used to find a few, here and there, but in the 12 years I’ve been casually scavenging in the neighborhood, I’ve seen books vanish from the students’ leavings. The only books I picked up last year were all from one house–a complete set of the Twilight novels (well-worn) and an equally-complete set of Britannica Great Books (pristine and unread). The whole lot has been sitting in boxes in my back room since I found it, and is slated for next month’s Goodwill drop-off. But that was an unusual haul; dead-tree books now seem to be dead tech to most students. Much as I never liked finding books in the trash, not finding them at all strikes me as much worse.

Today’s student-moveout trash pickings:

Twin-sized turquoise comforter: from the same house where, last week, I got a pillow with the turquoise sham that matches this comforter. I’m going to cut it into sections and bind the edges to make cat beds.

Two bath towels: a slate blue one that’s kind of seedy-looking, and a better one in peach. They’ll go to the Humane Society, where the animals don’t know it’s not the ’90s any more.

Six assorted men’s cotton t-shirts: I always grab cotton t-shirts; if nothing else, they make good painting rags. I tossed them all in the wash without paying much attention to the colors or checking out the graphics, but at least two are black and one is red.

One women’s cotton t-shirt in a dirt-brown color.

A cobalt-blue glass bottle.

A huge plastic lidded Starbucks cup for a cold beverage. What’s the size larger than a Venti? It’s that size.

Rejected: A Barbie-pink fleece bathrobe. It had enough fabric to justify grabbing it, if only to make into cat throws for the shelter, but I honestly despise that color and didn’t want to work with it.

And hey, you know what? I can afford to be a snob about trash because in the coming week there will be so fucking much of it. Plus, my house currently resembles an episode of Hoarders, so I’ve got to declare some sort of limits, however feeble.