January '26 Roundup
New Year, New Gear...plus, a fan (friend) submits a great find!
It’s my friggin’ birthday and I am so happy to be here! As a birthday gift, my brother got me a ‘cameo’ of my ‘favorite’ survivor player, Coach, wishing me happy birthday—and you better believe that was one of the better things money can buy!
January was spiritually and psychically another horrible month to be an American, but I am so grateful to every single person out there fighting the good fight. Hopefully the finds below can bring you some joy in this dark world.
Inner Child Delights
Decorative Objects
Personal Touches
No Inevitable Fish, but There Was a Bunny
Recently, a dear friend, Sasha (hey Sash!) reached out telling me she had found an incredible free find—$1500 worth of bricks! She and her husband, Dash (hi Dash!), are new homeowners (who also happen to be extremely crafty) and I knew something excellent would be in store with the salvaged material…you can read more below!
This “interview” has been condensed for clarity.
1. Why did you decide to pick up the $1500 worth of bricks? Did you have a project in mind, or was it just too good to refuse? What was it about this find that so intrigued you?
About 8 months ago Dash and I bought our little house and immediately started a very elaborate Pinterest board that we started to fill with both realistic and totally stretch inspiration photos. Our home is a 1925 Tudor knockoff so naturally our “Garden and Greens” sub-Pinterest board became essentially unattainable fairy garden themed. One thing all of the pins had in common were beautiful warm red brick patios (and a billion flowers in giant lovely terracotta pots). We scoped out the general cost of bricks, leveling sand, maybe even some help to do the build and realized that it just wasn’t in budget and wouldn’t be any time soon. On our daily morning scroll through the Craigslist free page we would see a handful of bricks here, a handful over there, all covered in mortar but still snapped up within an hour or two. We were dreaming but figured we would probably just need to wait and buy new bricks for the size of patio we wanted. Then we saw the posting. “Free Bricks, first come first served. Email for address, if the ad is up they’re still here” and we knew our “someday” plan was today.
2. Can you explain the process of picking up the bricks and bringing them home from start to finish? How did you find them? What do you plan to do with them?
Immediately we emailed. The post had been up for about 14 minutes which we knew might make us too late already. The photo in the ad showed bricks stacked about three quarters up the side of a HoneyPot portapotty, in a five foot deep square. It was the motherload. While Dash faithfully refreshed his email hoping for a “come on by” I decided to do some sleuthing. Armed with the general buffer that Craigslist gives you around the location of the goods and Google street view I found the house and we figured a sneaky drive by at lunch couldn’t hurt. When we passed the pile in our little Prius model C there was a large white truck tackling the brick pile, stacking what looked like the weight of our car worth of brick into their bed and the reality sunk in. We were too late. So we drove home consoling ourselves, vowing next time would be our turn. Two or three hours later, when the sting of defeat had begun to wear off, the email came. “Come on by, there’s still brick up front!” We flew to the car, no gloves, no tarp, nothing but hope that we would get there first. On the drive Dash calculated the carrying capacity of our little car, we figured we could safely handle roughly 64 bricks a load if they were roughly five pound a brick. Back and forth we went. Eleven minutes there, ten minutes to pack the car, eleven minutes home, five minutes to unload them in a loosely organized pile in front of the garage door. Repeat nine times that night. Towards the end, we wisened up and brought a headlamp and gloves, the muddy car was too far gone for a tarp to do much help at that point. We went to bed tired but feeling like we had just won a hyper specific lottery. The next morning we decided to do two more trips, deciding that by leaving the few whole bricks amongst the fragments we left in the pile we were surely going to be missing exactly that many bricks when it came time to building our patio.
3. Why do you think it is important to receive and give freely? Have you ever given something away that felt really good to hand off?
It’s a mutually beneficial exchange. While we were loading the car we were able to talk to the two home owners, they came up to us separately on different trips. They told us fond memories of their time together collecting the bricks over the years, twenty or thirty years ago, from “the brick yard” (aka part of the Bay that companies had been dumping construction waste for decades). They talked about packing two or three bricks away at a time, they pointed out some of their favorite stamps (some of the bricks have California emblazoned on them) and about using them to build their driveway. They also told us about their newest project, the reason they were gifting the bricks back to the community. I’m a sucker for a family story and history and Dash is one sentimental motherfucker so hearing the backstory gave us something buying new bricks from OSH never could. Giving, and receiving, helps us connect with our community. It benefits all parties involved and is an environmentally conscious action, the Earth’s resources are finite after all.
The most impactful thing that we’ve personally given is probably our 1993 Ford Connect van that Dash spent the summer of 2019 turning into a camper. While we were down in Santa Cruz we realized it wasn’t doing anyone much good parked in our driveway and decided to donate it to an organization that supports the local unhoused community. Giving essentially a home on wheels to a charity helping folks needing a roof felt right.
4. I know you read a book recently about ‘frugal fun’ more or less: can you tell me a bit more about this? What came up for you?
Yes!! The Art of Frugal Hedonism by Annie Raser-Rowland and Adam Grubb! Honestly, highly recommend. The book helps you take a step back to look at your own consumption patterns, question them, and then encourages you to recalibrate your satisfaction set points so you can find glee in little pleasures we all already have in our lives. It’s a little self-helpy but if you can forgive it for that you can find great anecdotes about “doing your shopping in the waste stream… [of] the grand emporium of affluent cultures discarded bounty.” Sounds like something the readers of One Gal’s Trash could really get behind right?
5. What is the best thing you have gotten for free and why? Note: this excludes gifts.
I’ve been really lucky in the free economy. More than of the furniture in our home was free, I recently found a really cool terracotta outdoor fireplace on the side of the road and then all of these bricks? I feel like the luckiest duck.
i need that effing bunny.