The dining room table where I shared meals with my mother and listened to her many stories moved with me from California to Minnesota in 2019. My mom was three years gone by then, and the table did not fit in my little living room/ dining room after I made my second Minneapolis move.One afternoon we borrowed a hole saw from our neighbor, and the once stately dining room table became a patio table.

It was a classy addition to the backyard. Then this happened.

My mom had a lot of skills/pastimes/hobbies. She could knit, crochet, sew, macramé, fix things. And she was an expert trash-picker. A gold pocket watch, a wooden baby cradle, a big box of very nice baby and toddler clothes, a gold ring with a giant genuine amethyst. Books, paintings, antique dishes. What she didn't keep, she gave away or sold at garage sales.I've inherited the trash-picker gene, but now with the existence of my local Buy Nothing group, I get to browse through other people's cast-offs without lifting the lids of their trash cans or stalking the alleys. We got a little Buy Nothing patio table after the tree fell, but I've been watching Buy Nothing for the past couple months for a bigger one. Here it is.

Getting it into my hatchback was a bit dicey. Good thing that bag of clothes for Goodwill was still in the back seat, so we could tie the hatch shut.

The past couple of days the table has been undergoing a transformation.

My mom would be so thrilled.

And soon I'll be giving away the little table on Buy Nothing. I love how that works.