Day 221

 When I searched online, practically the first post I saw was the exact one I had hoped to find. There was a person giving away free sand. You just needed to pick up. I reached out immediately and found her story to be similar to what mine could have been. She had sand delivered to her home, but ended up ordering too much. Now, her husband was hoping someone would come over and clear the large pile of sand from their driveway and she was anxious to find a taker.

That taker would be me.

Similarly, I had a somewhat impatient young boy desperate to have me find sand to fill an empty box in our play area. Her mistake could be our solution. Hopefully, her problem could be solved as soon as possible. 

There was a few hours of daylight left so I decided to see how much sand pickup process I could get before nightfall. I grabbed every bucket, bin, and bag I could fit into our van and set off for her home half an hour away.

When I got there, I filled up as much sand as I could and delivered it home. Even though I filled  a van full of sand, the result was a drop in the bucket. Literally. I would need to make multiple trips. Although I could only make one more trip that evening, I worked out an arrangement with the owner so that I could come early the next morning and hopefully complete the task. It took a total of four round trips to get the vast majority of sand off of her driveway and into our backyard. It felt great to accomplish this project at a very reasonable price in terms of money , energy, and time. The back and forth over that evening and the following morning left my musclesquite sore and my van sandy, but the result was exactly what my son wanted. We now had a sandbox. And as luck would have it, the amount of sand I was able to acquire was the amount of sand we needed.

My kids could play in the sand. I had more work to do.