Our Story

 
 

Trash to Treasure

This mini documentary tells the story of Reclaiming One Eighteen. This video features the start, the process, the name, and my heart. Put together by Deonte Streeter we couldn’t be more pleased to share our story with you.

 
 

Lovely flowers have been known to grow out of trash heaps.     

Elizabeth Kata

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I am happy in a dumpster… finding treasure in the trash is a love language of mine.

 

The Beginning

I have always had a love for recycling and upcycling. Truth is, I hate when things go to waste. In America we have a huge problem of throwing amazing items out because of excess.

In 2019 our family moved into a newly constructed home. Walking the neighborhood watching new housing go up became a big part of our day, as we have children that are attracted to construction. Looking in the dumpsters at the discarded piles became part of those walks.

One of our sons is from Ethiopia and on more then one occasion I have looked at dumpster bins and cried because in Ethiopia EVERYTHING is used. All the excess wood would be used to build homes in other countries. And the collecting began.

I started making items from the excess wood. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t done it before, I wasn’t going to let perfectly good material go to waste. What was thrown away could be repurposed, reused, upcycled, reclaimed.