By Steven Edwards

TORONTO. Home sweet home is what my wife, Hilda, and I think every me we enter our one-bedroom apartment in Toronto's downtown St. Lawrence neighbourhood. We moved in last February as newlyweds with just a futon mattress, bedding and kitchen items. Since then, we've collected so much nice stuff that friends compliment us on how well we're doing.

"You must be rich," remarked one. "Oh, what a lovely home," said another.

We're not "rich," but it is a lovely – and comfortable – home. To me, there's nothing more relaxing than lying on our velveteen sofa with a glass of wine an arm's length away on our Italian-made coffee table. Hilda, meanwhile, loves to sink into the plushy folds of the cushion that's cradled by our cane-frame easy chair. We each have a desk and a swivel chair for when we're feeling industrious. We've also replaced out rock-hard futon with a more sleep-friendly mattress, box spring and frame.

As I look around our apartment, I marvel at how cozy it all looks. I also marvel at the price we've paid for our post-February belongings. They've cost us...nothing. A thoughtful colleague gave us the coffee table. The rest – the armchairs, the lamps, the curtains, the dining table and chairs, the bookcases, the rug, the sideboard, the side tables, the spare single bed, the bedside cabinet, the large electric fan, the filing cabinet, and the already-mentioned sofa, easy chair, double bed and desk sets – all came from the garbage.

Yes, Hilda and I are living in other people's waste. While newly weds traditionally tour department stores to find furniture for their marital home, we took trips to local garbage dumps. Not for us, exorbitant base prices plus GST, PST and delivery fees. We even think garage sales are a rip-off. Two dollars for this chair? Outrageous. Five bucks for that table. Hey, I'm not made of money. Why should we hand over cash for stuff we can find in the dumps?

True, we'll never come across any Chippendale, Adam or Hepplewhite pieces. The people who own that sort of furniture pass it down from generation to generation. But the dumps have a constant turnover of still-serviceable items.

The supply has been so plentiful this past year that we've barely had to compromise on colour coordination. Our curtains match our sofa, which matches our rug. At night, our living room is illuminated by three trash-retrieved lamps, with matching shades. To create the entire home, we've sacrificed no more than some huff and puff to get whatever we've found back to the apartment, and a healthy dollop of elbow grease to clean up the item. Once ready for display, the separate pieces show not a hint of their unsanitary provenance.

So why do I get the sense that you are laughing at us? Does the fact that we've waded knee-deep in garbage to furnish our home somehow reduce us to second-class citizens?

There's no doubt that prejudice against dumpster divers pervades our society. I can see it in the neighbours' slightly parted Venetian blinds each time I return from the dump with another grubby find slung over my shoulder. But may I say on behalf of dumpster divers everywhere that we hold the moral high ground? It is not we who are judging others. Neither are we guilty of the sin called vanity.

Instead, we practice the virtue of efficacy. After all, what could be more efficacious than giving extended life to some dumped piece of furniture that would otherwise take up space in some landfill or pollute the atmosphere when burned in some incinerator?

That being said, I admit that even we, at first, attached shame to the activity. We skulked under cover of darkness to install our inaugural garbage-dump acquisition, the sofa. A couple of weeks later, we found ourselves lying to neighbours who asked where we'd picked up a pair of matching swivel chairs.

"Um, er, a friend gave them to us," I said hesitatingly.

"Yes," interjected Hilda, with a little more conviction. "A friend gave them to us."

But pretty soon, it became clear that our public image would have to give way to the demands of domestic comfort. What's the point of maintaining standards when, each time you arrive home, you are greeted by large expanses of empty space?

We were forced to abandon any thoughts that we could rely on nightfall to blot out our blushes after we discovered the golden rule of successful dumpster diving: Take whatever you spot the minute you spot it. If you see something during the daylight hours, but wait until nightfall before you act, you'll lose your quarry to some less bashful dumpster diver. When we dilly-dallied over whether to snap up one of those expensive wooden trolleys for kids, it was gone by the time we returned for it after dark. Likewise a barely used crib. Now we grab first and decide later.

We concluded that the best way to overcome embarrassment was to take the offensive. We now hold our heads high when we return from the dump with our various finds. If someone is staring at us, we rope them into giving us a hand. If we're asked where we got a particular item, we make no secret of its origin.

We do maintain a measure of discrimination in our dumpster diving, however. Dumped food stands no chance of reaching our kitchen. So there's no need to have your stomach pumped after dining with us. We've also never taken clothes from a dump, though I'm not promising that something in a nice 32 waist won't grab my attention one of these days.

No doubt we'll move house some day. Wherever we go, our garbage is going with us. Logically, we shouldn't have any removal fees to pay – we'll just ask the city to move us ... in one of their garbage trucks!

    Steven Edwards is on the lookout for some sturdy bureaus