One More Frugal Thing — A Schwanky Wastebasket Makeover
by Katy on June 8, 2025 · 45 comments
One of the things that I brought home from last week’s neighborhood garage sale freebie fest was a Restoration Hardware polished nickel wastebasket. It was superficially rusty on the inside, but I welcome a DIY challenge.
Please enjoy the funhouse mirror effect, although I promise you that my reading glasses are not this big!
Step one was to take sandpaper to the interior to smooth out the paintable surface.
Step two was to tape a bag around the outside to protect it against paint overspray. Although the inside was silver, I chose white spray paint as I already owned it and my goal is to always use what I own before buying anything unnecessary. Because, c’mon . . . the inside color of a wastebasket doesn’t really matter.
It’s the same found-it-in-the-basement paint that I used to paint over my scratched toilet seat a couple weeks ago!
I sprayed three light coats of paint to get even coverage and then let it dry overnight before removing the tape and bag.
For those who think this is an excess of effort to revive a revolting old wastebasket, I see your point. However, I need to point out that the closest version of this item is currently on sale for $499 on Restoration Hardware’s website! (Although this one is a mere $140!)
For comparison, my husband and I paid $500 for our first car in 1987, a 1972 VW squareback!
Behold an even white interior surface, not disgusting looking at all!
I think I’ll use it in our bedroom and give away the plastic lined wicker wastebasket I’d been using through my Buy Nothing group.
Here’s one last no-money shot to impress you with the power of white spray paint. This free rusty wastebasket went unclaimed throughout an entire day until I stopped by after the garage sale. Goodwill wouldn’t have accepted it and it surely would’ve hit the landfill. Now it’s back in use and no money was spent.
Katy — 1, throwaway society — 0!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
Looks great!! Yay!! One more thing saved from the landfill.
I would have paid a couple of bucks for that trash can at a Habitat Restore and had no idea it was originally so expensive! I love that you saw it and its potential in a free pile!
The idea that anyone would pay $500, or even $140, for a wastebasket is making me feel a bit faint. But, that said, you’ve done a beautiful job of restoring this one.
In other frugal news, the NY Times just did an article on university-area scavenging/”hippie Christmas.” Once again, NCA/Frugal Girl readers are ahead of the curve!
And a neighbor down at the cul-de-sac has just put a bunch of plants and pots on her curb with a “Free” sign. I’ve already brought home what looks like a pepper plant and am about to make another trip.
P.S. The article by the young NC woman whose story leads off the NYT article is even more interesting–and doesn’t seem to be behind a paywall. Here it is (https://indyweek.com/culture/duke-students-dumpster-diving/).
Thank you– that was an interesting read. I understand how finding free stuff could become obsessive.
The small college I worked for never quite worked out consistent policies for where/how students could or should leave unwanted items, how much staff could take (and housekeepers and grounds crew who first found the stuff were probably the lowest paid on campus and would have benefitted the most), whether there should be a barn sale of some sort open to the public, etc. I appreciate the pro-active approaches some schools take as described in the article and expect that will only continue.
But as usual, I cringe at the implication ALL students and their parents, especially at large private schools, are wealthy and spendthrifts. They aren’t. And some even buy stuff on sale or at thrift stores.
Heidi Louise, I agree that not all students at private schools should be tarred with the same brush. (I regularly see students at the thrift stores near our local party-school university and our local Jesuit college.) Unfortunately, enough of them *are* like what I see at the party-school university and what Lena Geller sees at Duke that this roaring trade in discards goes on.
Meanwhile, here’s my take so far from the free pile at the cul-de-sac: the pepper plant, five lovely hand-thrown pottery mugs (I promise I’ll donate a few of my existing mugs!), two hand-thrown pottery vases, one bigger hand-thrown pot, and two healthy little philodendron plants that I carved out of a much bigger bunch of philodendrons strangling in a too-small plastic pot. The neighbor who put all this on the curb is a talented, perfectionistic potter who regularly lets the rest of us help ourselves to her “rejects.” (And she’s Japanese, so I think Katy and her kids would enjoy these as well.)
I took pottery in college, but had to way to get them all home, so I sold them for a few bucks apiece before I left school. I know of two old friends who still have that pottery, while I had to steal one vase from my dad in order to have one of my own pieces in my own house a few years ago.
“In my day …” everything I took and acquired came home with me at end of college year. Of course, McD’s fries were 25 cents. Ha.
The school my daughter went to had Goodwill on campus accepting donations, although the dumpsters were still filled with usable items.
Katy, what happened to the pottery you made featuring the topless lady?
One of the maintenance men at my old college would come get the bricks and board bookshelves — the concrete blocks being too heavy for the garbage collectors. He had the dorm mothers call him, and they thought this was somehow mandated by the university administration, to collect those bricks and boards and put them in a certain place down at the maintenance barn. I was a dorm worker and he admitted to me that no, the university did NOT collect these items — but he did. They went into his pickup truck and he hauled them home each evening. He lived outside city limits where the building codes were not very strict, and probably almost non-existent. He said he’d already built a garage and a shed out of the concrete blocks he’d collected over the years, and now he was adding even more to his pile. His next project was going to be a workshop. Most of the building materials were free — bricks and boards and whatever other useful items he scrounged from the students’ garbage!
The owner of the house I grew up in expanded it from a modest cabin into a three-story house with a wraparound porch using mostly materials salvaged from his job as a facilities worker and carpenter at a university.
Yes, I was able to read the Duke dumpster diving article for free. It was a good story all us NCAs would enjoy, IMO.
At my kids’ university, there are big wheelie bins where the discarded stuff is supposed to go, and it’s unclear whether there is a policy. Some staff say it’s all up for grabs and other staff guard it. It’s unclear what is done with the good stuff. I’m picking them up next week, and I’ve already sent a list of things I’d like them to scavenge. Last year, they scavenged cleaning supplies and hand soap. I didn’t have to buy any of that stuff for an entire year!
Li, you’ve got your kids scavenging?? Good training!
My parents worked for a university, so it’s generational scrounging!
Our university has a giant exchange activity every year as the academic year is ending. You bring what you have to get rid of starting at 10, dozens of volunteers sort and group like things, and at noon people who want things come through and take what they want. No money changes hands. The event is held in a huge field and the entire community is welcome to participate.
Congratulations! You have a thing! It’s so shiny I can’t tell what it looks like. I am unschwanky and would be happier with a plastic trash can. But it is good to know how to restore metal.
Great job! I like the white inside. And, honestly, who pays $500 for a wastebasket and then lets it rust out? It’s shameful.
I’m sure they had it in a steamy bathroom.
They may not have. As I type I am sitting on a RH Cloud sofa, extra deep, velvet, down cushions, which retail for 9K. I paid less than a quarter of that, new. It’s fab quality, unbelievably comfortable and I will have it the rest of my life.
Rose, that sounds amazing! How did you score such a great deal on a sofa like that?
I live in a ridiculously wealthy area.
Nice job on the trash bin rehab. I’m surprised you aren’t selling it!
You’ve inspired me to work on one of my deferred projects — an ugly little footstool that needs a facelift. I have a can of spray paint I got from a free pile, but it’s gold and I’m not feeling the trumpy aesthetic.
Maybe ask in your buy nothing group is anyone has the color you want and then give away the gold spray paint?
Good idea. The reason I picked it up in the first place is because I have the strong belief that, in an area where things get tagged, spray paint should never be part of a free pile!
I was wondering how you were going to restore the inside – great solution. I can’t imagine paying either of those prices for a trash can or many other things.
I need to find a day that is dry and not windy to touch up the paint on metal benches in our yard before the rust gets too out of control. Thanks for the motivation.
Make sure to wear a mask!!
If I spent $499 on a wastebasket I wouldn’t have any money left to throw away in it. :-{
I guess $450 is your limit? 😉
I was thinking more like $4.50….
Does anyone know why these wastebaskets are so expensive??
Because idiotic people were buying them at that price. Who knew wastebaskets were status symbols? Not I.
What an inspiring resurrection. I should think the previous owner would have treated it with TLC considering that hefty investment. Thanks for saving it from the landfill!
I love the makeover. And that it is practical. I cannot fathom those prices for a trash can.
I wore a made-over sweatshirt today and was quite pleased with it.
My mind is boggling at the thought of a $500 trash can. What next, a gold toilet?
Great job seeing the potential!
Some of you have mentioned “college castoffs”, and I realize Penn State is HUMUNGOUS, but here is something they do that benefits students (getting rid of their stuff), thrifters (accumulating the goodies students no longer want), and the community (fundraiaing project).
If you live in or near a college town, regardless of size, you may want to send a proposal for a similar project or plant the idea to a local charity and let them get the ball rolling…
https://sites.psu.edu/trash2treasure/faq/
What a great program! They make it easy for the students. Thanks for sharing.
I agree, what a great idea! Either this program, or something like Lindsey mentioned in her comment. Its a shame to toss perfectly good (and sometimes brand new) stuff.
Only one little frugal thing today. Stopped at the store to pick up broth to make hot turkey sandwiches for tonight’s (and the next 2 days’) supper. I always check the discount shelves. 20.8 oz GM Raisin Nut Bran. Regularly $6.29; reduced to $3.14 (box is bent up). Thank you to whomever bent the box!
Well done, the revamped bin looks great!
This is so impressive! I have to admit I would have passed over a rusty wastebasket without a thought! You are helping me rethink what is salvageable.
There is a major university in my town, but it’s on the north side and I’m on the south, so I’m not much aware of its comings and goings. I think I need to get with the program.
Very impressive!
But I cannot imagine anyone paying almost 500 bucks for a trash can, no matter how pretty it may be! Good grief!!!
This is quite impressive, Katy! I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have picked up on how great it would look restored just from seeing it in that free box. Wow!
This reminds me of when one of the tenants in our building decided to move back to Melbourne and get left so much stuff out the front with a “free sign”. We scored all his cleaning products (most not opened) as well as his fancy schmancy bin that was over $250 when we looked up the brand!