Treasure hunting at its finest!

Twice a year our council (local government, kind of like a county but a bit bigger I reckon) does bulk pick-up, called council collection. The first time I saw it in March I thought loads of neighbors had been tossed out and evicted. Despite my family's insistence that mass evictions couldn't be possible, I awaited confirmation from a school parent that this was a normal occurrence and one to be celebrated!

So the idea is that twice per year on a designated day in each neighborhood residents can toss out bulky items and the council will collect them and take them to a landfill. What's so amazing about council collection, though, is that sweet spot between when residents have dumped their goods on the footpath (kerb? curb?) and when the council has come around to collect them.

When we arrived home from the US college football game a few Sundays ago, the hunt was on!

The boys joined in and we had a blast!

There were heaps of junk, but also some great treasures. Junk pics (in our opinion) immediately below:

We have an amazing outdoor space that we haven't been using because we didn't want to invest in much past the basics during our short time in Sydney. With spring and summer approaching, I've been pining for some outdoor furniture -- checking Gumtree (like CraigsList), the local buy / sell / swap message boards, etc. So when I had a look around our neighborhood at all the goodies people tossed out, I was hopeful I could piece together a nice set-up for our expansive balcony.

Wow! Check out this cute table I found; the next morning on our way to school the boys spotted the chairs and they're perfect!

Found these two wicker chairs with footstools that tuck under + that adorable colorful "egg" chair that the boys love!

Found this well-loved but still very functional scooter that M adores!

Found a nice basket to store some sports balls in.

Perfectly good condition split rubbish bin; I was going to use it for our recyclables but the boys wanted it for organising sports equipment. 

All in all, we found great stuff that our neighbors were chucking. We saved it from landfills (yay!!), repurposed it for our needs (wants?) and will pass it along when the time comes.

I'm a huge fan of council collection! Imagine how much old stuff could be saved from landfills if other municipalities adopted this 💚.