Dumpsta Diva

Yea I said it. Dumpsta diva, what a title to have. But that's what I did Monday.

I had the pleasure of attempting to sell scrap metal for the first time. This proved to be an interesting feat.

I've read up on this subject before, and wanted to know how much money you can actually make. So, I headed in the basement, and there's a buttload of metal sitting there not being used. Shelving mostly, a charcoal grill, some random crap we have no idea what it is. And we didn't know the type of metal it was either. But it didn't hurt to try.

So my mom and I brought stuff up, hosed the dust off it and wipe it a little bit, and shoved it into her trunk. We headed down to Pawtucket to Berger's recycling, which is quite an interesting drive. After getting lost slightly a couple of times and the GPS yelling at us to "take ramp to 95 North", we got there in one piece.

When we arrived there was an older gentlemen taking stuff from another man's truck. So I stood there and waited, I guess expecting to be waited on. I finally got someone's attention and he looked at our stuff. No good. Not that it couldn't be sold, but it wasn't worth it to them. The type of material we had is worth a penny per pound, so twenty pounds would be 20 cents. I told this to my mom, and she was shocked. Several times now we've attempted to cash in on stuff, like coins that are worth more, and they aren't by that much. We tried to sell silver and gold, and we had some fake stuff that wouldn't sell either. All this stuff we saved to try to make money off of has come to us to no avail. But I forgot about our brass and copper pieces we had in the car, so I showed it to the guy. Wasn't much, but we got $7.55 for it. So it wasn't a wasted trip unlike our other attempts.

The guys told us where we can throw out the worthless metal, so we chucked it, as there was no point of us taking it home. Another man was standing there, and he gave us some pointers in finding good metal. He told us that if a magnet sticks to it, it's no good. If it sticks slightly, then it's good enough to sell. If it doesn't stick, it's excellent. Then he told us they took cans, but it's better we take it to MA, where we get the 5 cents deposit. However, what my mom and I thought about later, was that MA only takes cans that held carbonated drinks, not things like tea or lemonade. So we figured we'd take the cans that we can't sell in MA, and save up a bunch and take a trip. The guy told us it takes about 28 cans to make a pound, so we're keeping a mental note to determine how much we are going to get. They take extension cords, car batteries, and what not.


Right now I'm in the process of stripping wire, which is a bitch, I'm not going to lie. I watched a couple of YouTube videos to see how to make the process even slightly easier. It may be a pain to strip, but it's worth more money stripped than unstripped. My mom recently ran over an extenstion cord with a lawnmower, and we're stripping that too, piece by piece.



You may ask why the hell am I going through all this trouble? Well, we are in desperate need of cash, as we may be losing our home. We owe the bank a lot in past due amounts we couldn't pay, and if we don't get it we have to put a foreclosure sale sign up. We've been battling this for a year now. We'd rather not sell, as we have no place to go, and it's much cheaper keeping our house. Trying to get an apartment to accomedate even some of our needs won't work. Our attempt with Obama's plan failed, as we don't qualify. We are still trying to work with Rhode Island Housing, but as I figure out so far in my "young" almost 25 years of life, you can't depend on anyone, and just do stuff yourself. I have very little faith in our government or any people or organization so far. Not that I've never received help, or that it wasn't appreciated, but it's too little too late, not enough, or nothing significant or life changing.

The last time I went through something like this way two years ago, when my student loan fell through just before classes start. After screaming and crying as I was almost done with school and angry that a loan company I've used twice before let me down, there was one more little thing that I could do. And my school told me of one more company I can try, and made it. The year after I was fearing the same problem, but my father passed away, and it was a bittersweet moment that my father left behind life insurance that left significant money to me and my sister. I used the majority of that money to pay for school my senior year. I just hope no one close to me dies just so I can get money to pay for the house. I'd rather some miracle occur first.

So right now we are collecting metal stuff to sell. One of my coworkers is trying to host a can drive at her school, and is collecting more wires and stuff to strip for copper. We are trying to find things we can get sell to get money. Looking for full time work or a second job. (Which I've been doing for over a year now, by the way.) Anything.

I feel like this is pathetic, pathetic that there are two well educated people in my household, that can't find a full time job anywhere. Rhode Island is too small, and has too little places of employment to try to get anything. I know I'm not alone. I've worked so hard to avoid this exact situation I'm in now, and me and my family don't deserve this. We've done nothing to deserve this. It's like having a severe illness, where this a potion to cure it, but no one seems to have it. And dying a very slow death, but trying to grasp at straws of hope that maybe you will be cured.