Dumpster diving for treasures

One man's trash in another man's treasure and E and T have literally taken that to heart. On Saturday E, T and one of their friends started going through the big trash cans. The friend found a big red stuffed animal. E found some books, computer games, and markers. T found a box of markers and crayons. There is something disturbing about seeing you're little ones open up trash cans and climb inside or else after it is tipped to scrounge around. They were told to stop and they said that they had enough stuff. Great. What does that mean that one has enough?

Steve and I told them that we don't look through garbage because it's 1) not ours and 2) it's disgusting. On Sunday, I had E take some recycle stuff out to the blue can. She was gone for a lot longer than what it should take and M was with her. I went outside and what do I see but E closing the lid on another person's recycle bin and running back exclaiming that she has found a journal that has never been written in before along with some more pens. I reiterated that we don't keep other people's garbage and that she needed to throw them all away. She was quite sad and told me how clean they all were and that she just wanted a journal to write and color in. Couldn't she keep it? I told her that this was the last time. No more dumpster diving.

Tuesday night E was out with friends and what did she find, a dictionary. Her very own dictionary to use and look up words with. Can't she just keep it? She doesn't own a dictionary and now she can look up all the words she needs to and she won't have to use the one we own. Then T came out and showed all the little neighborhood kids how to tip over the trash cans so they can look inside and see what they can find. All those little kids were so excited until I told them all that they needed to stop looking in the garbage cans.

I am so glad that today was trash day and all trash cans have been emptied and hopefully the treasures will stop coming back to our house.