Finding Purpose for Our Renovation Materials To avoid sending tons of usable fixtures and appliances to a landfill during our renovation, we tried a “post it and see if they will come” strategy. It worked. Credit...Sally Deng May 26, 2021 My husband and I recently bought a larger apartment in our Upper East Side building that came with custom carpentry, solid wood doors, a nice working kitchen and hefty doorknobs. And then, we ditched much of it. I’ve gone sidewalk shopping for years in the city, and I know New Yorkers junk lots of good gear that they just can’t store. So, rather than send truckloads of perfectly-fine-but-dated material to landfills, I set my sights on giving away everything. Not just fixtures and built-ins from the new apartment but moving supplies, kids’ musical instruments with low mileage, and a custom 6-by-6-foot armoire from our old apartment that the new owner didn’t want and that we could no longer use.