The beginner urban forager might need some help figuring out what's good and rare to gather up off the streets of Oakland. Please add your wisdom here.

Common and useful:

guess which one of these will probably be snatched up first

  • milk crates - note: the commonness of this is disputed. quote: "i never find milk crates." (note: building up a relationship with your local corner store will help you acquire milk crates- while many stores need to redeem these, some don't and will be happy to give you these!)
  • 5 gallon paint buckets
  • clothes
  • sofas (definitely useful for sofafree. look it up.)

Common and useless:

  • mattresses
  • really broken furniture
  • wood pallets (unless your use case is fire)
  • dot matrix printers
  • dirty diapers. these things are everywhere. totally useless.
  • old and giant TVs.

Less common and useful:

  • useful electronics
  • fully-functional furniture (not too rare though)
  • bikes

Less common and useless:

  • those potty training things for kids. no picture available but really, it happens. would you reuse one of those?