Of course, one of my favorite home based businesses is recycling and salvage. I jumped into this business in the early 1980s and still work it part time. It gave me the income to raise a large family and care for them. With the money I earned I was able to return to college, finish up obtaining a master's degree from the University of California and become a GIS professional. Some of my time is devoted to GIS consulting and my website MapCruzin.com.
Though I no longer do recycling and salvage fulltime I still do it quite a bit. Just in the past 12 months I've done the following and I got all the material for FREE!
I deconstructed an old house and reclaimed several thousand board feet of beautiful clear lumber of all sized plus roofing, doors, windows, plumging. The roofing was aluminum and not reuseable, but I was able to sell it for scrap for $300. I figure the value of the material is well over $6,000. I'm using it to build greenhouses, a shop, and a garden cottage.
A "client" (owner of house above) told me about an estate sale that had tons of building material - word of mouth referrals are VERY important! I checked it out. Turns out sale was over and they were left with tons of lumber and building materials of all sorts. Over a 3 day period I hauled out 9 pickup and 10' trailer loads of lumber, firewood, building materials of all sorts, drip irrigation system and supplies, roofing, footings, pumps, a contractor's rack to fit my pickup ... on and on. All for free.
I was called to pickup some "junk" at a ranch. I picked up a riding mower (which I use all the time), chains, lumber, an old logging winch weighing over 600 lbs., a camper shell, roofing, barn wood, boxes of electrical and plumbing items. Most of this I will use but I sold the old logging winch to a collector for $450 and the camper shell for $150. What I don't use of the rest I'll sell.
I burn wood for heat. I happened across a rusty old woodstove in a friend's garden. A couple of years ago it was given to her, but she lived in an urban area and wasn't going to heat with wood. It looked terrible but I could see that it was a LOPI. This particular stove retails for about $1,800. So, I dragged it home, scraped off the rust, cleaned the glass, put on a new coat of paint and resealed the door. Now for a couple hours of work I have a much newer, more efficient woodstove that uses only 1/2 the amount of wood compared to my old one.
Someone saw my flyer at the grocery store and gave me a call asking if I wanted a bunch of old computers. I checked it out and hauled home over 80 desktop computers plus a few really old and collectible ones. The prize was an Altair - the very first hobby computer. Also several very old computers with the collectible 4004 chip and some other rare pieces. The rest were mostly 386, 486 and few Pentiums. In scrap value I figure there's around $3,000 worth, but I'll be going through them carefully for anything that is reusable and worth more than scrap. I'm sure I'll find quite a bit. It took me all afternoon to bring the computers home and I figure it will take me about a leisurely week to go through them all.
There have been many more small success that add to my income and also to my supply of things I need to build a self-sufficient, energy independent life.
Wood Profits - How An Amatuer Carpenter Made A Whooping $9,567 Per Month By Selling Easy-To-Build Woodworking Furniture & Crafts From Home!" You Don't Have To Be A Woodworking Expert To Make A Killing In Your Spare Time By Selling Easy-To-Build Woodworking Crafts From Home!
Office Cleaning - HOW TO MAKE AN EXTRA $54,000 PART-TIME
your first year... in your own
OFFICE CLEANING BUSINESS.
