Magic Carpet

Michelle and I have been working on finishing the basement so that its not scary to be in during, well, most times of the year. To make it livable, we put some old carpet down on the floor to hep us pretend that it was a real room. Before cutting out chunks of the concrete floor to repour, we rolled up the carpet and put it in my parent’s truck so we could take it to East County Recycling Environmentally Conscious Recycling. ECR is one of the only options for recycling carpet in the Portland Metro area.

We needed to pick up some sheet rock with the truck, so we set the carpet roll out on the parking strip. Later that afternoon when we returned, the carpet had disapeared. There’s a phenomenon around here where you can set out some reasonable item you’re done with and a free sign and it’ll be picked up within 24 hours by someone. The phenomenon is so strong that the following things have happened:

  • Well, for one, someone took our doubly-old carpet
  • The hippie neighbors put out utter rubbish and it somehow all disappeared, though at slightly slower pace.
  • Occasionally you’ll see a pile of something in front of someone’s house with a “Not Free” sign on it to signal the home owner’s intent to use the pile

If you attempt to use this phenomenon, do not attempt to kick-start by posting something on craigslist. You’ll end up with multiple unhappy parties who show up to get the free item when some dude who was just walking by picked it up not 4 minutes ago. I mean, it’s not my fault they drove from Vancouver to get a few rolls of sod.

I love recycling, but I love reusing even more.

One thought on “Magic Carpet”

  1. Yep, we were planning on taking our old damp carpet to ECR too until someone took our old basement carpet – even though we were clear about the fact it had been through a flood, then had been rained and snowed on.

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