The Subtle Art of Scrounging for the Garage

To properly maintain and even improve any garage on a tight budget, it is important to engage in obtaining items as cheaply as possible.

This is popularly known in the military as scrounging.

Scrounging is not a five finger discount! The rest of us call that stealing. On the contrary, scrounging is the ability to find items that others do not want, actually are tired of looking at, and do not wish to attempt to get good money for.

You can do this in several ways. The first is to watch the local trader newspaper and respond to ads for items you want in your shop at a price that is affordable. This still costs money.

Another method is to watch the Craigslist 'Free Stuff' advertisements. The pickings will be uniformly random, the competition can be pretty stiff if it's a nice item, and there can be lots of stuff to look through that you have no interest in. If the advertiser tells you you can have the item, then be prepared to drop everything to go pick up your new prize.

A curious Craigslist phenomenon is the 'Curb Alert' in the free stuff advertizing. This requires lots of luck and close proximity to score items advertized this way but can be well worth the effort.

Other sources of cheap or free are Auctions, Estate Sales, The local Newspaper, sometimes local TV web sites have classified ads, Garage sales, Yard sales, business closing clearance sales, thrift stores, items set out by the curb(be sure to ask first!), and the venerable wellspring of all things, the local apartment complex dumpster.

For Auctions, Estate Sales, Garage Sales, Yard Sales, and really any sale where the name of the game is to get rid of stuff, be sure to politely ask the seller if they will be disposing of any items after the sale. Talk nice and chances are good that the beat up book shelf you are eying for Five Bucks will be yours for free a little later.

When bartering for an item, it may seem like good practice to try to beat every nickle out of the sale, but this generally creates resentment on the part of the seller. Do it too frequently and if you run into that seller again they might just jack up their prices on you.  If the price is already better than fair and both of you know it, it is in bad form to try to get the price down even further. Just be nice and take the already great deal.

Then there is the 'secret' method of obtaining cool stuff. Trading for it! Never, ever, turn down something, anything, that is useful in a garage. A huge winner is shelving of any sort. Once you drag it home, you can begin working your network of friends and cronies to see if anybody wants the item, and what they have to trade for it. Once you make a deal its almost as if you got the traded item for free! Besides if you got that table for free, who cares if you 'only' got a shop light for it this time as 'I can use that' is always way more valuable than 'I don't need it'.

Bottom Line: By scrounging, as little money leaves your pocket as possible while steadily improving the utility of your garage. This is a key component of running an Easy Cheesy Garage.