getting rid of our little 2-seater Mustang

I wrote a while back about snagging chairs from other people's trash piles.  I've written elsewhere about snagging lots of other things from other people's trash piles.  And I think I might have mentioned once or twice that I hate putting out trash myself.  (I have said that here and there, haven't I?)

So you might think my home is filled to the gills with garbage, or at least filled to the gills with stuff. That ain't the case; I think our house is actually a relatively minimalist-yet-comfy kind of place.  The truth is, there are other choices besides "keep this item" and "send it to the landfill".  As my husband and I peer forward to the future down-sizing of our home, we're also working carefully toward moving even more of our unwanted (by us) belongings into places where they'll be wanted (by other people).

My husband has become a master of Freecycle recently.  Yay!  I am so grateful that something like Freecycle exists.   But I just want to tell about a different transfer-of-property tale: a happy story about how we got rid of our car.

First,  I have to tell you about how we GOT this car.  I found this sporty little two-seater mustang convertible out by someone's trash pile a year or two ago when I was running.   I suppose I should emphasize the word "little", because this was a kid's car, with a Barbie logo, in pepto-bismol-puke pink.  The battery was long gone, so the car was Nana-powered (or sometimes "Uncle N-son" powered).  But with an adorable small grandchild in the picture, how could I not rescue this baby from landfill-doom?

So I pushed the car home, parked it in the back yard, and made one small child very, very happy.  

Now, a  year or two later, my grandchild has outgrown this car.  And it's time to off-load it before we have to worry about whether to put it in a moving truck.  We were about to post a description to Freecycle, when we got this little message in our NextDoor.com in-box: 

I am looking for a 2-seat PowerWheels electric car for kids. It can be in any condition, as long as it's free. When my son was little I came by a dilapidated red, faded to pink, PowerWheels Jeep. It was completely dead - batteries too old to hold a charge.  

I painted it white with zebra stripes, replaced the batteries with an over-sized pair from an electric moped and completely rewired it. I added headlights, parking lights and tail lights. They were on a switch that could use just parking and tail lights then add the headlights, like a real car. I replaced the single pedal (with simple go/brake modes) with a dual pedal system. The left pedal was go/coast. Pressing the right pedal would interupt power (if the go pedal was down) and apply the resistor (brakes). It worked just like a real car.  

My son loved it. We'd go to the Turkey Hill to get milk and he would "drive". I'd have to walk quikly to keep up. He could run it for hours before it would start to slow down.  

Now that I am a grandfather, I want to build another. And with a second grandchild on the way, it will need to be a 2-seater.  

Thank you in advance.

Is this wonderful, or what?  It turns out, I know this particular grandfather.  So he came over to pick the car up, and we had a fabulous conversation about toy construction and electrification.  Isn't this whole story so much more fun than going to a mall?   I love the way my life of scrounging connects me to my community.  

I kind of wish I'd taken a picture of this awful little car before we gave it away, but I didn't -- so all I am keeping of this car now are a story and a memory.  Those, I don't mind taking with me to a smaller home.