WINDSOR — Diane Bennett and Susan Allen pulled a GMC pickup along the curb on Main Street. There, in front of Sarah Atwood’s home, the two Reading, Vt., women found what they had come for: free stuff.
Bennett and Allen made the pilgrimage to Windsor on Saturday on the hunt for erstwhile unwanted items — bicycles, furniture, wood boards, scrap metal — town residents were leaving outside for people to take away for free.
Dubbed The Great Give-Away, the townwide pick-and-peck involving some 40 addresses was organized as a way for households to unload unwanted objects that otherwise would be destined for a dumpster and landfill.
“It’s an awesome cause,” Bennett said of Windsor’s giveaway as she eyed the trove of items Atwood had set out, including a set of chairs with needlepoint cushions. Bennett and Allen retrieved unwanted household objects, which they restore or repurpose into craft items, to sell at a fundraiser benefit for the Reading Historical Society.
“We don’t want these things going into the landfill,” Bennett said.
She wanted to haul away Atwood’s chairs, too, but the bed of the pickup was overflowing with items from “probably seven” stops Bennett said they had made already that morning. But as Bennett pulled away in the truck she assured that she would be “getting my husband” to return later for the chairs that Atwood had set aside.
Saturday’s Great Give-Away was the brainchild of Windsor resident Ham Gillett who, as outreach coordinator for both Greater Upper Valley Solid Waste Management District and the South Windsor/Windham Counties Solid Waste Management District, knows a thing or two about waste and where it goes once it leaves people’s homes.
Gillett, who has lived in Windsor for 17 years, was also behind the launch three years ago of Windsor’s bi-annual “Dump Day,” when town residents bring unwanted household items that can’t be accepted by curbside trash haulers to a colony of dumpsters brought in for the day at the former Goodyear plant on River Street.
At the last Dump Day earlier this summer, a total of 23 tons of stuff was collected, Gillett said — which he found troubling, given that recycling is continually on his mind.
“I got increasingly upset at the amount of things that people were throwing away that were perfectly good,” Gillett said, adding that he “reached the limit” when one person wanted to dispose of a working chandelier that he thought was just the thing to go to Cover Home Repair in White River Junction for recycled use.
When Gillett asked why they didn’t take the chandelier to be recycled, he was told “we don’t have the time,” Gillett recalled.
“What I hear over and over again is that people are so busy they don’t have time to take it somewhere else,” Gillett said of people who bring items to discard at Dump Day (the next one is Oct. 23).
“It drives Ham insane to see anything thrown in the dumpster,” Town Manager Tom Marsh said. “He doesn’t want anything going into the landfill.”
Marsh said he couldn’t predict how Windsor’s first Great Give-Away would go but he hoped it would catch on.
“We are the ‘birthplace of Vermont,’ ” Marsh said about Windsor, invoking the town’s motto as the place where the constitution for the Vermont Republic was adopted in 1777. “Maybe we can become the center of recycling in New England.”
On Saturday, Gillett himself was out front of his home on Clough Avenue with a collection of things he was trying to give away, including a set of tires, some lumber, a pair of jumper cables and two comfy wood rocking swivel chairs, which he retrieved when they were thrown away in Thetford. They were on display under a pop-up tent, which he also saved from being thrown away in Strafford.
Gillett reported one man arrived early at 8:30 a.m. to take away the lumber boards — the escalating cost of lumber likely made that attractive, Gillett said — and a woman had scooped up some eating utensils, with her daughter asking, “Mom, why do you want that?” Gillett said.
As Gillett was outside, Windsor resident and planning commission member Brandon Dangelo arrived with his sister, Kelsey Dangelo-Worth, and her 2-year-old son, Ozial.
“You gotta see our haul!” exclaimed Dangelo, who helped Gillett get the word out on The Great Give-Away through social media, announcing they had found toys for his nephew and an L.L. Bean jogging stroller for his sister. Dangelo himself got a crockpot.
“I think it’s a good success,” he concluded.
A short distance from Gillett’s house on Buena Vista Court, John Gilman and his wife, Julie Gilman, were using the event to unload “four kids’ and more than 20 years of stuff,” Julie Gilman said from the driveway of their home, where they had assorted toys, puzzles and games laid out on tables.
“We’ve already had 10 to probably a dozen people,” said John Gilman, noting games and stuffed animals appeared to be particular favorites.
Around the corner from the Gilmans’ home, Windsor resident John Jones was loading his vehicle with toys outside the home of Lori Hirshfield and her husband, Kris Garnjost. Jones was finding playthings for his 2-year-old son. And then he lighted upon an item he didn’t expect: an inflatable plastic chair for kids.
“Those are great,” Hirshfield said, as Jones picked up the item and unfolded it.
“We’ve been looking for this,” Jones said excitedly about chair.
Kate Gibbel, who lives on Jarvis Street, was inspecting the table of items in front of the home of Jason Gaddis on Pine Street, which included a pair of rubber boots and a single-person fiberglass kayak with a paddle poking out of the hull on the ground.
Gibbel said she was cruising around town to “see what other people put out” because “I think I’m the only person on my block” who was trying to give away things she no longer wanted, which she described as “a popcorn maker and slightly broken dehumidifier.”
Gaddis’ kayak captured Gibbel’s attention, although not for herself.
“I’m going to tell my friend in Hartland about this,” she said as she snapped a photo of the kayak with her phone. “He restores kayaks.”
She called the of Windsor’s Great Give-Away “fantastic,” noting its utility for getting rid of unwanted items, not just now but in the future.
“It gets you in shape for Dump Day,” she said.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
