Now on to the really hard core homeless items. My top 3 are
- Mattresses. (I never did find any place that would take a mattress so I re-purposed the baby crib rails and metal as garden supports and put the mattress on the floor for visiting kids.) See mattress posts here and here.
- Items that are not appropriate for a thrift store. (fancy gloves, fireplace irons, exclusive religious sculptures. I’ll deal with expensive inherited items like these in my upcoming post, “What to do with inherited treasures?”
- Trophies. This is today’s challenge. I dealt with trophies almost 5 years ago. Click here to see post. The embarrassing thing is that I still found 13 trophies and 12 plaques stored away in a corner of the house. I finally decided to seriously research what to do with them since I didn’t need them, didn’t plan on being super crafty and turn them into coat pegs or other projects, but I also didn’t want them to just go into a landfill.
Here’s what didn’t work (so you don’t have to waste your time):
- I called all 5 of the Trophy stores in the greater Cincinnati area. None of them were interested in old trophies.
- I googled “What to do with old trophies” and several variations of this search. I came up with 5 promising websites: Total Awards & Promotions (temporarily closed), TC-retrophy (not now), Earth 911 (the search function gave me a local contact, Pro-Recyclers. Since it was close, I drove there. It no longer exists), and Lamb Awards (I got a live person at this site based in Maryland. You mail your trophies to them and they turn them into new trophies. You pay the shipping. The only problem is that they only accept trophies during the summer. Since it’s now September, I didn’t want to wait till June.
Trophy Solution:
On the way home from Pro Recyclers, I had to pass the grade school near our home. I know that one of the recommendations I offered 5 years ago was to donate trophies to schools, scout troops, etc. but I never did it. I decided what the heck, I’ve got these trophies ready to go, why not at least stop and ask. Victory! A teacher said, “Yes, sure we can use them for art projects, whatever.” You may not be so lucky, but it’s worth a couple calls.
When all else fails – the Curb Side Solution
Since I inherited two lovely chairs from my mother, I had two comfortable but a bit worn chairs that I no longer needed. I didn’t have a vehicle big enough to take them to a thrift shop so I defaulted to the old standby – put them out the afternoon before garbage collection day and hope someone picks them up. It worked. I also inherited two end tables so I put them out the following week. It worked again. Glad that there are scavengers around who are willing to make my life easier.
