my only friend, the end. (The Doors.) This is the end – of the dumpsters.

This one had a lot more yard waste in it than the others. It also had some stuff from John’s brother’s and sister’s house. Dumpster #5 is only about 90%-95% full because some guy came by and offered to take all the scrap metal. He took about two thirds for recycle and about one third for reuse. He was giving some of the gardening stands to his mom to use, which seemed like a good use for it to us. The metal was only worth about $130 per ton, and I doubt there was a ton of metal. After almost 7 weeks of sorting, cleaning, repairing, and lifting, the time required to scrap it would not have been worth the $65.

The guy collecting the metal amused us because the said he was “green” – reuse and recycle. He said he could have taken the stuff away for much cheaper; he has a ravine on his properly that he burns stuff in. He also offered to take the fold out couch bed, burn the mattress off, and scrap the metal. We did not really consider dumping uncontained trash into a ravine to pollute the ground water and burning plastic to pollute the air as “green”.

In total, it was 100 cubic yards of dumpster space and nearly 100 cubic yards of trash, worn out furniture, and personal effects that no one had room for. We moved roughly 15 truck loads of stuff that John’s brother wanted to keep to his storage buildings. The truck bed was overfilled to 3-4 cubic yards for many of the loads. The volume of stuff was around another 50 cubic yards. That is about 150 cubic yards of stuff, ignoring that the trash was broken down to use less dumpster space.

For our move, we used three large U-Haul trailers (14.7 cyd) and a medium truck (28.4 cyd) for a total of about 72.5 cubic yards. We also sold or disposed of about half of our possessions. The volume works out similar between the two houses, but we sold most and crushed less stuff. Sadly, I think U-Haul vastly under estimates how much stuff people have. Their largest truck claims to hold the contents of a 3-4 bedroom house, but it is only about 60 cubic yards. That is less than half of what either house would have needed.