My family curb shops because it’s fun, but we also do it because it allows us to work towards goals without spending any money. Over the past month, we’ve picked up several things for our new office garden and for our cabin. Here’s a peek at our latest curb finds.

Alright guys, I’ve been holding out on you. Because I got a new sofa last summer, and I haven’t even shown it to you yet. See that gorgeous leather Chesterfield sofa in my living room? It retails for over $3,000 at Ethan Allen, but we got it for just $50 at a yard sale. I still can’t believe it.

We haven’t had much time for curb shopping lately, but sometimes the curb piles just find you. That was certainly the case last week, when we cut through a neighborhood to avoid traffic, and came across a huge pile of landscaping rock.

Here’s our first big yard sale find of the season. This 20-quart Hobart mixer normally sells for around $5,300 new, or $1,200 used, but we got it for $200!

It was at the last stop on our yard sale route

This Kindle Fire charger is one of the first things that I spotted. With two teenagers in the house, mine had mysteriously gone missing. I could have ordered another one off of Amazon for $19.99, but I decided to take advantage of Curb Mart’s deal instead. Hopefully, I can do a better job of hiding this one.

Get ready for some more progress at the cabin. This week yielded some pretty sweet curb treasure.

My husband spotted these two basement windows (turned sideways in the picture above) while he was taking the kids to school. I’m thinking they’ll work well in the bath house, if we position them at the top of the wall. They even had their screens with them. Score!

A few weeks ago my husband spotted this range hood at Habitat. It was 36-inches wide – the perfect size for our 1957 stove! When we started renovating our kitchen a few years ago, we had wiring and a vent installed for a range hood, but we hadn’t gotten around to installing one yet. We were going to build our own, but when we came across this one for $50, we knew we couldn’t build one for any less; so we snatched it up.

Dark stained wood doesn’t really fit the look of our kitchen, so we gave it a quick sanding and a new paint job.

Curb shopping is definitely something that I’m thankful for. It saves us money, and has provided us with countless hours of entertainment.

While we were on our way to pick up our oldest daughter from school yesterday, we passed a curb pile with several potted mums. I asked my husband to turn around, so I could see if they were annual or perennial mums. After reading the tags, I discovered that four out of the five were perennials. Score! I’d been meaning to pick some mums up on clearance this year, but just hadn’t gotten around to it. Looks like being busy saved me some money. I plan to plant these in the backyard. There are two yellows and two purples.

While we were out yard saling Friday, my husband mentioned that he’d like to stop by the scrap metal place to see if they still had a riding lawn mower engine they’d had the last time he was over there. The engine recently locked up on one of our riding mowers, and they had the same engine.

Now, that might not sound like an exciting outing to you, but I was all in. This particular scrap place started pulling out the good stuff that people bring in, and reselling it, instead of recycling it. And I love that. So much good stuff gets scrapped because people are desperate for cash, or simply can’t see the potential of an item. I like that they’re giving some of that stuff a second chance.

And we’ve gotten some pretty cool stuff over there. My husband rarely comes home from taking a load of scrap without having bought something. It’s an absolute treasure trove, and everything is priced by the pound, so there are plenty of deals to be had.

This week was no exception. They still had the motor that my husband needed for our riding mower. They stuck it on the scale, and announced that it was $45. It spins freely, so if it fixes our mower, that’ll be a real bargain.

But that wasn’t out biggest bargain from the trip. Nope. Not even close.

This big pile of landscaping rocks was our first find of the morning. We got plenty of exercise loading and unloading it, but then, so did whoever paid for all those rocks to begin with. Now I just need to decide where I want to use them in my garden.

When I got up yesterday morning, I spotted a new curb pile a street down from us. A BIG curb pile. That’s exciting any time of year, but it’s especially exciting this time of year, when the piles are few and far between. We raced down to take a look, and I’m so glad we did. Here’s what we rescued.

Four upper kitchen cabinets. We have enough kitchen base cabinets for the cabin, but we didn’t have enough uppers yet. Looks like we do now. These will look great after a good scrub and a couple fresh coats of paint.