Ryan McFarland

I decided a few days ago that on Sunday i would go to the landfill and pay $5 to do some salvaging.  I had to go to the pool a few times to let a plumber in to work on the boiler and then see the results of his inspection.  After doing that i headed to the dump.  One of the first things that i saw was this bicycle.

I’m not sure why someone cut two bike frames and then duct taped them together.  You would think that if they had the tools to cut steel and aluminum that they also could have drilled through and bolted the pieces together.  I ignored the bike until a while later when i decided to collect all the aluminum that i could find to try and make my $5 back.  I got $.40 a pound for aluminum when i went to Juneau and sold scrap.  If i could find 12 and a half pounds of aluminum i could call the trip a wash.  Here is most of the scrap that i came up with.

I didn’t want to work too hard for the scrap.  Another guy was there cutting cords and pulling aluminum wheels off of scrap vehicles so i pulled the things that take a bit of work with a relatively low payoff.  For instance, there are 6 bicycle rims there.  I brought a pair of bolt cutters and snipped the spokes where they cross (so i have to make half as many cuts as there are spokes).  I had to remove some tires too.  That’s quite a bit of work for perhaps a pound of metal (I have not weighed any so i don’t know how much to expect.

The bicycle frame is also aluminum but the fork and the crankset have to be removed.  Some of the brake parts will also be scrapped.  You can see the rear triangle of a GT bike frame that i pulled from the duct taped bike.  The straight pieces were from a window frame.  The most weight comes from the other big pieces - cast aluminum from a chop saw.  They require some cleaning too.

I came across two Razor scooters and chucked them in the back of my car.  Turns out that the front “fork” on both of them was bent so i ended up taking them apart for the aluminum.  The deck, upright pipe and handlebars were fairly easy to remove from the steel hingebetween the deck and upright.

I got a bit of assorted stuff like the the shovel.  I have found useable tools almost every trip i have ever made to the dump.  I don’t have any of this type of shovel so it will be nice to have it as an option.  A commercial door closer - no idea what i’ll use that for… yet.  The metal Christmas tree bowl is holding some parts for a garage door.  I might need those when i enclose our carport.  The “0″ “REG” and “1″ things are spiral bound and flip to use for showing the price of things on display.  They are made of plastic so shouldn’t have even been in the metal pile.  The tin box says Dremel on it but i’ll find something else to store in it since i like my Dremel case.  I found four brand new “Property of the United States” metal signs.  Three of them say “All persons are prohibited under penalty of the Law from committing damage.” And one sign says “All persons are prohibited under penalty of the Law from committing trespass.”  Also in the picture are two wheels i pulled from another scooter.

The first thing i loaded in the car were these metal signs that i pulled off of an old cigarette dispensing rack for Old Gold regular and king size.  I didn’t bring drill bits with me so i couldn’t remove the one rivet holding the “Don’t run short… buy a carton” piece off so i used my bolt cutters to trim away as much of the display as possible.  The “Remember… courtesy is our policy!” was on the back side that would have faced the employee.  On either side were the smaller ads for Kent cigarettes.

I also picked up a chair.  I cut the arms off of it on the spot with my new cordless reciprocating saw.  I’ll reupholster it somehow and it will end up either deck furniture, an office chair or the aluminum base will fetch a few dollars.

One last thing that i picked up - a display rack for Astroturf door mats.  It’s on casters so i’ll definitely be keeping the base because i love to be able to roll things around.  Right now i’m using it to store my collection of aluminum scrap.

This was also in the metal pile - a giant sheet of sponge.  The deck boards are 2×6s.  Ollie liked lying on it.

Litter benefits me

Originally uploaded by zieak

I spent a few minutes and checked a spot near my office that high school kids go. I’ve seen them sneak down there during school hours and before and after school. I found plenty of cigarette butts, beer and liquor bottles, pop cans, and empty snack wrappers. I’ve decided i’ll start to patrol it and will harass kids I see go down there. I picked up 10 botle caps that got me 3 points each in the mycokerewards program. Big thanks to Kevin for texting me codes when he gets them!

The news is depressing.  The US Dollar is slumping.  Canada’s dollar is of equal value.  I hear that according to the Big Mac Index that a burger would cost over $7 in some European countries.  Perhaps all of my future travels will be to developing nations where the dollar still has a relatively high value.  Or we could switch to LEGO® bricks for currency.  Here are my reasons.

1. Then our currency could never be “worthless” - if nothing else we could play with it when we can no longer buy things with the money.  I suppose some people are already doing this with penny stacking.
2. Some of our money is made out of metal. That may have been fine during the iron age but today’s economies revolve around petroleum products. Let our currency show that!
3. Every child would instinctively be raised only knowing how to save (even horde) money.  How many times have you seen a penny on the street?  How full is that “need a penny” tray?  If those were even 1×1 LEGO® bricks they would have been picked up before you ever saw them.  Nobody gives them away unless they  are doing it for a gift.  And if they didn’t give you Lego then they would have given you money — see?  Cash is a secondary gift to LEGO® kits.
4. If you ever stepped on a LEGO® piece you know that you’d never just leave it lying around.  You would always keep it stored in a safe place where you are not going to step on one with your heel while barefoot.
5. It wouldn’t be prone to slipping out of your pocket and in between the couch cushions.  Those characteristic bumps would make that almost impossible.
6. I have more LEGO® pieces than i have money.  I bet quite a few people are like that.  If my net worth were measured in LEGO® pieces then i would owe nobody and would have a significant stash in the spare bedroom closet.
7. Counterfeits would be easy to spot.  “Hey, wait — this is a Megablock!  What are you trying to pull here?”

Selling scrap metal in Juneau

Originally uploaded by zieak

Right off the ferry in Juneau we stopped by Auke Bay Cans where they bought the scrap copper and aluminum I brought. We had to sort my pipe and wire but otherwise just dumped the boxes into plastic garbage cans and weighed them. She cut me a check for just over $77. Less than a half hour from when we drove off the ferry we were pulling out of their driveway.

Tarnished bell

Originally uploaded by zieak

A few weeks ago we bought this brass bell at a garage sale. (I have it disassembled here to work on cleaning it up.) It was marked for $10 but we bought it with a pile of other things including some records which we got for $10 less than they were asking si it was kind of free.

Why would we want a bell like this? Well, in many bars there is a bell hung up. In Alaska, if you ring the bell you are buying a round for everyone in the place. My point? We bought a bar at a garage sale earlier. I’ll cover that later!

I started to clean up the bell using a brass polish recipe I found online. Salt, powdered laundry detergent, lemon juice, warm water… It did a good job smothing the bell but it didn’t remove the tarnishing. Today I started using sand paper to bring the bell back to life. It works better but my hands are cramping.

Writing blog posts from my cell phone isn’t really helping my hands relax though.

Mickey Mouse Spoon

Originally uploaded by zieak

I really should document more of my garage sale and thrift store finds better. Saturday morning we got up and went to four garage sales. At the first we bought a t-shirt and two sets of glasses with ducks on them. The night before we had FFF at Mike, Joy and Earl’s place. They don’t have many glasses in good shape. Now they have 8 more.

At the next sale I got this Mickey Mouse spoon. Why? Because it is identical (except for a nick from the dishwasher) to one I had as a kid. Is that still kicking around mom? Bought it for 25¢ at Stacy Etcher’s garage sale. I also got a Snoopy fork for the same price.

I’m a fan of words and text.  I love signs and textures.  I also like thrift ships and lately have been trying to be extremely thrifty with my use of my money.  So this picture of part of one of the signs of the Office of Thrift Supervision is nice.  Remember my other Office of Thrift Supervision picture of a sign that’s just around the corner?

We had no idea that our local grocery store gave two cents credit for each shopping bag you bring of your own. Cena just found out when she brought our recycled cat food bags turned giant industrial strength shopping bags to the store. If we were to shop every week and use 10 bags that comes to $10.40 a year in savings to us.  Our cat food bag turned shopping bag is much larger than a typical shopping bag so our first time using them we only saved 10 cents (five bags).  Of course, our intent is not to save money.  We really just don’t need all those plastic bags.  We have a tote completely full of them already.

In our quest toward financial freedom we’re doing a number of practical exercises to reducing expenses. But in brainstorming ways to save money we’ve also thought of some methods we’ll be skipping. Here’s my list of ridiculously frugal ways to save money.

1. Dumpster dive. For food. There are quite a few people that do this because we know that perfectly good food is thrown away. And i’m not above pulling perfectly good things out of the trash. But there’s something that makes me a little squeamish about eating meat, vegetables or baked goods from the trash. Potential savings - hundreds to over a thousand.
2. Cancel all your unnecessary bills. All of them. No internet or Netflix (use the library). No cable or satellite TV. No cell phone or land line. Just get down to electricity and water bills. If you have things in storage sell them all - you are not using them if they are in storage. Cancel the gym membership (if you can without penalty) or sell it to someone else. If mass transit is available or you can walk or ride your bike, cancel your insurance and park your car. Do all this and your potential annual savings will easily be thousands of dollars.
3. Get all of your toiletries from free sources. Prowl the freebies websites for sample products. Gather all the soap, shampoo, and other stuff from hotels during work trips (or friend’s work trips). Many hotels offer complimentary toothbrushes, toothpaste, razors, and the like for travelers that “forgot” theirs. Perhaps watch the front desk for a shift change and ask again. You could save up to a hundred dollars by being this cheap.
4. Eat rice and a multivitamin when #1 fails you. Don’t complain. There are starving people in Sudan that wish they could have that multi-vitamin. If you can pull this off you’ll save thousands a year.
5. Go to the bathroom at work or in public restrooms. Then you don’t have to pay for the water, sewer (sewer fees tend to be tied to water consumption because there is no such thing as a sewer meter) or toilet paper. If you must, pee in the tub and just give a quick shot of water from the shower to rinse it down. A toilet flush uses 1-5 gallons depending on how old your toilet is. A 2.5 GPM shower head run for 10 seconds uses less than a half gallon. If your body can manage this then you might save over a hundred dollars depending on your taste in toilet paper.
6. Shower as infrequently as possible. Even just dropping to every other day will halve your bathing water consumption. Your hot water heater will not need to make as much hot water (hopefully you have an on-demand unit for the maximum savings). When you do shower, adjust the water flow so that it isn’t using the full flow of water.  These might save a hundred dollars or more annually.
7. Just drink water. You don’t need anything else. Coffee and colas are not good for you anyway. If you go to one of those trendy coffee shops for a drink twice a day you’re spending more than $2,000 fueling your addiction. People that smoke a pack a day are spending about that much. You could save as little as a few hundred dollars annually to tens of thousands of dollars on future dental bills for cleanings and cavities.
8. Unplug appliances that are not used. Definitely unplug any wall warts (the black boxes that make it difficult to plug anything next to them on a power strip). Also unplug anything with a LED on it, or a clock (microwave, VCR, etc.), and any computer equipment or televisions. These draw electricity even when turned “off.” For convenience you can plug a set of equipment into a power strip and then just unplug it. Wait, if you cancel your internet service and shut off your TV provider then you shouldn’t need this stuff often anyway. Just unplug it all until you come home from the library with a foreign film that isn’t available as a book. If you’re doing the rice, vitamins, and water meal then you can unplug your refrigerator too. Easily hundreds of dollars in savings available here.