I doubt this will be the only tools we will buy from Craigslist. But we managed to get a bunch of useful items over a span of 3 weeks and I decided to log them in a blog post. Note that for each item we buy; there are probably a dozen that we go through and at least 2 or 3 listings that we end up reaching out to.  We are not just trying to save money by minimizing what we buy; we do not want to accumulate a lot of clutter and waste time tracking and maintaining stuff.

We first found a really nice wheel barrow for $20. We pounced on this deal since most good wheelbarrows are at least $60 on Craigslist. Besides the guy lived 20 minutes from our house. When Alan went to pick it up; he ended up chatting with the seller. It so happened that the seller was downsizing his house and was trying to get rid of other stuff. So Alan ended up getting a seed disperser, sprayer, rake and another pry for free.  Alan then found a guy selling an interesting mix of unique things – it just so happened that we needed all of them – a drill attachment for a stirrer, an emergency starter and compressor, a heavy metal chain, a couple of spanners; a couple of snow chains for a garden tractor (which could double up as a security chain) and a grease gun (which we needed to lube our tractor and backhoe). We got the lot for $75 and the guy threw in a metal drum for free. We were looking for a drum to burn stuff in and this would be perfect. We just need to figure out how to remove the top. We just seem to keep adding sub-projects to our tasks! We then found someone selling a spade in Frederick for $5.00 and a brand new 100′ garden hose for $5 – both were very close to downtown Frederick. This is where our settlement is going to be held on October 7th. So we arranged to pick them up after the settlement on Friday evening.

We also located a really nice 14′ heavy metal chain for $20.00 in Herndon. The guy was moving and didn’t want to carry the heavy chain along. Since I have a friend who lives in the area, I asked her to get the chain from the guy. I hope to pick up the chain from her when I meet her next.

#craigslist #purchase