We do the same thing nearly
every Sunday afternoon. I fold down our station wagon’s back seats, and my wife
lays out an old blanket over them. We devote the rest of the day to a
neighborhood treasure hunt.
Sometimes nothing turns up. But more
often we return home laden with goods: a desk lamp, a spatula, a perfectly good
ironing board, all found on the side of the road. In our suburb of Washington,
D.C., people have the luxury of throwing these things away. We fortunately have
the leisure to pick them up.
Early last year, I grabbed a coffee
table from a prominent congressman’s garbage pile. My wife a few weeks later
dragged home an armchair whose upholstery mimics the Met Cloisters’ unicorn
tapestries. Sometime in the spring, after months of living couchless, we hauled
back a scroll-armed sofa from a Russian diplomat’s apartment. And so on. We are
private collectors of sorts, and we’re always looking for new pieces.
We can’t rely entirely on our own savviness, of course. We often go to Nextdoor or Facebook Marketplace for the things that people don’t discard with their waste. That’s how we get our firewood, coffee, and, once, an espresso machine that almost worked. It’s always surprising what people are willing to just give away. We’re hoping to find an upright piano soon.
We have the most fun when the
acquisition is completely fortuitous. During a thunderstorm last July, we
stumbled upon an Art Nouveau writing desk outside a condemned resort hotel. It
was perched atop a pile of several decades’ worth of defunct hospitality:
landline phones, radio clocks, tiki torches, a swimming pool vacuum, and
hundreds of loose shoehorns. All junk, but a lot of it surprisingly durable. I
use the landline for radio interviews, and I am writing this column seated at
the desk.
Family members often send us pictures
of their own finds. These are most frequently waterlogged couches stranded on
the side of the highway. But my sister once picked up an intact Good Humor ice
cream freezer, and my brothers sometimes score Redskins paraphernalia. My
father is forever unearthing rotted sailboats.
I was never prouder than when I found my first piece: a chaise lounge, pulled off a burn-pile somewhere in southern Michigan. It was beautiful, although it smelled like mold. In hindsight, I believe that I ought to have left it alone. Its stench made me sneeze for months. Whenever I flip back through the books I read while splayed out across it, I feel a little sick.
My wife was wiser. When she moved to
New York City several years ago, she skipped the trash heaps and pilfered the
Upper West’s sidewalks for decent chairs. I followed her to the city not long
after and did the same.
We were pinched for cash in those
days, as we are now. But I’m not complaining. Most people who marry young, even
if they both work, have to improvise a little in their domestic lives. I think
we prefer it that way, or at least have learned to. My wife is having a baby
this summer, and necessity more than thrift keeps us on the hunt.
Recently we walked into a Crate &
Barrel, on a whim, to see what the competition had to offer, and both of us
burst out laughing. How can so much plastic and beige and sterility be so
expensive? Neither of us can imagine dropping two grand on a mid-century modern
couch when we know full well some kid will stain it the color of grape juice.
And we shudder at the idea of buying a down-market version on Amazon, with
superficially similar design. If we wanted to sit on a rock, we’d go outside.
What’s the fun in buying new
furniture, anyway? Not only does it all look the same; almost none of it is
built to last. The good stuff is all out on the streets.
Nic Rowan is a staff writer at the Washington Examiner.
