by NICK ROSEN on JULY 18, 2010 - 4 Comments in SELF-SUFFICIENCY
Off the Bus and on the Scrounge
Jim Juczak is located at the Woodhenge Sustainable Community: “The Center for the Study of Things Practical and Not So Practical.” Jim looks 40 but is in fact about 50. He is quite simply the best scrounger in upstate New York. He is one of the stars of Off the Grid
Jim scrounges building materials, clothes, food, junk, guns – just about anything. He lives to scrounge. Or rather he lives for free – his life is dedicated to not paying the market price for anything, and he loves to share his knowledge with others.
Now he has written a book about it, and will, for a small price, send you a copy. Here is a brief extract:
Be aware that every area has a lot of locations that are free or nearly free that you may not know about. Just a little checking around may reveal parks, hiking trails, library programs, free concerts, museums, factory tours (Utica Club Brewery or Hershey’s), open houses, wine tasting, interesting local clubs (Star Trek Fan Club), High School musicals and plays, parades, ethnic parties, and lots more.
Getting stuff…
A) Sometime there are things you need to buy to be comfortable…consider some more unusual sources…
(1) Dumpster diving & garbage picking
(2) Roadside trash collection ‘special’ days (look for the richer neighborhoods
(3) Behind stores (ask, just ask!)
(4) Construction sites
(5) College campuses at the end of the Spring term
(6) Storage rental places have regular “blind” auctions
(7) Stores that are being renovated
(8) Houses that are being remodeled
(9) Recycling centers
4 comments
Used to do lots of garbage picking, dumpster diving and ‘special day’ collection picking but our area now uses special closed topped garbage cans for mechanical dumping, almost all dumpster are closed and locked, and there are no longer any ‘special day’ collections – a real bummer for me.
So, I have had to resort to sale days at the recycle store, yard sales and church rummage sales. It just doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies that free did.
I will like to know alot you and your book here Jim Juczak, send me an email davidkelvinson@yahoo.co.uk.
If you have a little cash — THRIFT STORES can be great sources of cheap good quality clothes and household items
well, i use to live in London and now in the very near suburbs of Paris and are surnamed by friend the lady bag. As i always will leave the morning and come back with free stuff that i will have found on my path that people throw out and use to and still jump in skips. I go through black bags or just go to the common cellar are people here in Paris hardly now whats mean recycling or re-using….
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