Giving Away Doors

I spent this morning giving away doors. After completing the demolition work at CityWalk at 511 N. Akard in downtown Dallas, we had a couple of hundred doors left over that we’d saved. Our original intent had been to reuse as many of the doors as possible—in the office section of the building, apartments take a different kind of door. But in the end we only needed a couple of dozen doors, so we had at least two hundred to give away.

We checked all the usual places to give the doors away—Habitat for Humanity, etc.—but nobody needed that many doors. So we put an advertisement on Craig’s List for anyone who wanted doors to come and get them this morning beginning at 7:00 a.m. I had no idea whether anyone would come, but a lot of people were interested.

We had men, women, Anglos, Hispanics, Asian Americans and African Americans all show up at 7:00 a.m. to get their share of doors. Some people took only one or two doors, and others filled up the back of a pick up truck with a couple of dozen doors. I didn’t keep count, but I would guess that we gave away about seventy doors. That is approximately one third of the doors we had.

I don’t know what the exercise proved. We just didn’t want to send something to the landfill if somebody can still use them. I was amazed at the diverse group of hard working people that were willing to get up on a Saturday morning and make their way to the center of downtown Dallas to pick up a door or so. I don’t know about you, but even though I think I’m pretty frugal (and I have a pick up), I’m far from sure that I’d be willing to give up my sleep and get up before 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning because someone was giving free, used doors away.

I wasn’t even that happy to get up early to go give away the doors. I hope the Lord forgives me for what I thought about the gentleman that woke me up an hour early to ask for directions.

But if people can use our doors, then I feel we have a duty to give them away rather than throw them away. So if you missed out on the doors this time, keep watching my blog or Craig’s List Dallas for the next door give away. It will probably take place in a couple of weeks, after I’ve had at least one Saturday to sleep in.