Tuesday, June 18, 2013

THE COST OF FREE

Since I have fixed up the backyard, I have been on a quest to find toys, ground cover, etc. to make the outside area a little nicer. Two of the parks that we frequent are covered in wood chips and I thought that would be perfect for our backyard. We don't get much sun back there because of the large trees so grass doesn't grow.

This was my goal
I priced the cost of wood chips and since our yard is pretty sizeable, it would have cost about $300 to spread a good layer of the store bought wood chips back there. So what do I do!?! I hit craigslist. Low and behold there is a company that advertises free mulch. Not bad; perfect price. This is probably around March when I found this website. So, I go online, fill out the form, and then wait. The website site they would contact me via email or telephone before the delivery was made. They didn't.

Fast forward to May; it was the Tuesday after Mother's Day.

Kielle and I were out and about doing our normal running around and I pull up to the house singing Alphabet Al's Name Game song. Screeeeeccch. I can't pull into my driveway because there is a huge dump truck in my driveway unloading TONS of wood chips. What in the world!!? I jump out the car and run over. Dude says to me "I can't stop mid load" What!?! Um... I sit and watch as the pile gets higher and higher. This is a HOT mess. Realization sets in - these are the wood chips I ordered... back. in. March.  Awwww hell. When he finishes he locks up the back and drives off. I'm stuck staring at a mountain of wood chips. Literally a mountain. The mound was so wide I couldn't even pull  my car all the way up to the house.

The wood chips were taller than the car
I was so overwhelmed I grabbed Kielle and just went inside. I didn't even look at it.

Now, before I go on let me just state what my intentions were... We needed to get our back fence replaced so my thought was that I would have the truck drive to the back of the house after we had taken down the fence and dump the chips. But since I did not receive any notification that the truck was coming, I wasn't able to pull down the fence. Now as a reminder, because we live in a townhouse, in order to reach the backyard, you have to go through the house. How was I going to get all of this mess from the front of the house to the back? After a quick snack and peering at the mound from behind the curtains as if it would disappear, I decided to man up and start hauling.

I grabbed the recycle bin, yes that small bright blue bin, and started filling it with chips. I had transported about 4 bins when I realized I needed to memorialize yet another "This can only happen to me" moment so I grabbed my camera and took a  before photo.


I worked pretty much all day Tuesday from about 2pm to 5pm in the sun. To be honest, I was pushing hard because I sooooo didn't want to hear hubby's comments. I don't know how much I thought I would get done, but needless to say - no headway was made, None. My neighbors saw me struggling, this was during the 90+ degree days we were having and I started getting some supplies. I got a shovel and most importantly... a wheel barrel!


Y'all should have seen me struggling with this thing! It was comedy. After a quick tutorial on how to load it and transport it through the house safely, I felt like I was starting to make progress. I was up against the clock, because it was scheduled to rain on Thursday and I didn't want those wood chips to get wet... and heavy. I convinced a few neighbors to put the chips in their backyards and around their trees and even Kielle got in the spirit and helped me a little bit.


After day one this is where we were; we got about half way done. We put up our tools, got washed up, and prepped for dinner. I also waited to see/hear my husband's reaction.


After work, the hubby came in and didn't say anything until dinner. Then he says, "See this is why you need an office job. When you're home stuff like this happens." hahahahahahha I was rolling... because it is sooo true! ahhahaha. Khyri just kept saying, "Look at the mountain of mess. Why are all of those wood chips in the front? What did you do mommy?"

The next day after the men headed out for the day, Kielle and I went to work again and within 2 hours we had completed the yard. The wheel barrel saved us for real! We went to The Home Depot and got some 6 foot treated wood slats, that would normally be used for a fence, to set down as a border. I think the end result turned out great.


The kiddos love using their shovels to move the wood chips around. I left part of the yard plain dirt because I know the kiddos like making mud and planting flowers, etc in the backyard. So now we have a good variety back there - wood chips, forest (in the right hand back corner) and dirt - a munchkin's paradise.

Wouldn't it be nice if the story ended there?!?! It would be... but it wouldn't be my story. After we finished the backyard, there was still a mound of chips left out front. We had used maybe 1/3 of the wood chips. So now I had to figure out how to get rid of the remaining stock. I called to some junk removal places and they wanted $300 to $550 to haul it away. If we bagged it up that would bring the cost down significantly; that still wasn't enough for me though. This stuff was free. I'm not gonna pay hundreds of bucks to remove free wood chips.

I called the city of Smyrna and they said they don't haul wood chips. Blah Blah Blah... I want my taxes back hmph. I thought I was slick and tried putting the wood chips into black garbage bags and putting them in the trash. Do you know those super smart sanitation engineers cut the bags open to expose the wood chips and nicely left the full garbage can by my mailbox on collection day! Can't pull one over on them. grrrrrrrr... I needed a new plan.

My new neighbor is doing a lot of work on her house and she has a "fix it guy" that comes around every so often. I asked him how much he would charge. At first he said $150 to to bag it and haul it. I said, "Well if we bag it up, how much?" $60. So the hubby called in a favor from his Masonic friends and we bagged up all the wood chips that weekend; there were 42 bags in all. The guy hauled half of it off, but then as most "neighborhood fix it guys" do, he asked for more money to finish the job. This left a bad taste in our mouths, so I asked my neighbor for advice. She said that most probably the guy was just dumping the bags at his apartment complex in the dumpster. So what do I do?!?! I find an apartment complex with a dumpster. We still needed to get rid of about 15 bags so I went back to the source - craigslist. I sure did. Maybe my mistake can be someone else's good fortune :- ) I posted that I had wood chips for the taking already bagged up free for the taking. Some nice man came while I was out with Kielle and scooped up 12 bags! That left 3; I can see the finish line. Since I had already scoped out a dumpster at a nearby complex, the hubby and I packed the car with the remaining yard waste bags and headed over to dump them. This was Tuesday - exactly one week after they had been dumped literally on our doorstep.

Calculating my time, worry, stress, and money spent for removal, I'd have to say that that free was actually more like $275.99 :-) hahahahaaha all I can do is laugh.