In reply to a dear friend’s raucous laughter when mentioning my visits to ‘the dump’, I will elaborate.

The dump!  What sounds like a location for the lowest caste of third-world citizens, I consider one of my happiest Hampton jaunts and destinations.

We have had a dump as an established venue in Hampton for decades.  Still at the same location as occupied those many years ago, when it became public (citizens used to bury and ‘dump’ stuff in their back yards in Hampton, you know, where lovely scavenging can result in finding ebay- and collector-worthy items still) our dump took over, yielding items and treasures for the – ahem, not picky (pun intended).

I have found bona fide antiques, among the many a Sheraton corner washstand and a rope bed tightener, as well as necessary household items. I laugh; to delineate items at my house would sound more like shopping from a thrift store, except I found most for FREE – at the dump. Nespresso coffee maker! Breville toaster oven! Clocks, clocks, clocks!  Furniture galore!  And my newest and happiest find, a Kirby G3 vacuum cleaner.  Oh, and all the vacuums I’ve brought home in the last few years were up and running after only a couple of satisfying hours of cleaning and unclogging. I find this work most enjoyable, and hey, as I’m a Swamp Yankee, you can’t beat the dollars saved.

While it is true that the ‘swap shed’ (I have rebranded it in my own thinking as the ‘Stuff Hut’) is at present a tangled mess, there are still fine items to be found at its periphery.

What?  I see you rolling your eyes and huffing and puffing.  Believe me, our society throws away huge volumes of still-useful, still-working things due to many factors.  We want to upgrade; we don’t have the time, or perhaps believe we lack the skills, to fix an item ourselves, and can’t see spending much money to do the same when to do so would cost as much as a new purchase.  In this estimation you are woefully correct.

For the thrifty, the crafty, and the retired, however, a pleasant summer afternoon working outside in the sun, or working inside in the warmth on a chill day, can be therapeutic as we repair an item still retaining many years’ worth of usefulness.  It teaches patience, and hones our mechanical abilities with the added benefit of yielding us with an item we didn’t have to buy.  Yeah, a win-win here.

Hey, wait – don’t throw that away!  I think I can fix it!  And if not, why… just bring it to the dump!

June Pawlikowski Miller