I’m ever flabbergasted by folks that toss good clothing and furniture in the garbage. I’m like, how damn lazy can you be?!
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Dude, damn near every article of designer/brand name anything that I own was bought second-hand, or it was given to me as a gift.
The upside of being part of the working poor in this country is that I have learned to be thrifty as fuck, out of sheer necessity.
ITA about people who don’t donate their unwanted items which are still serviceable; there’s just no good excuse.
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I once came across a couple tossing a perfectly good kitchen table because they were moving and didn’t want to take it across country. I told them where they could donate it some two or three miles away using the Silverado they were driving. When I got the sense they weren’t going to do it, I told them I would take in my wife’s Tacoma (a much smaller truck) and guilt-tripped the gentleman into coming with me (I made up some excuse about how they’d need the owner to drop it off). By the time we got to Goodwill, I had given him a friendly little sermon. He seemed genuinely repentant. Hopefully they donated their good second-hand stuff after that.
I grew up in a working blue-collar family. My dad enlisted when he was 17. Growing up, we lived off the generosity of others more than we didn’t. So people who won’t take 15 minutes to drop good stuff off at one of the innumerable donation sites around them seriously bum me out, but I try to take a constructive attitude and not get pissed off at them. More brand name stuff with honey than vinegar, and all that.
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Good on you.
I don’t “get pissed”, because that’s a waste of my own energy, but it is disheartening at times.
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I try not to get angry. I succeed far more than not. I agree totally, worrying and anger are pretty much always wastes of time and energy.
It’s actually really easy where I live: if you put something out on the curb or, if there’s an alley, then in the alley by the garbage cans, it is understood (anywhere in the city) that the item is free for the taking. Things don’t sit around long, especially not in my section of town. There’s always someone who’s thrilled to get what you don’t want anymore.
I’ve even seen people put masking tape tags on shoes and clothes to indicate the size.
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The free stuff area on Craigslist is a gold mine for both finding and getting rid of stuff. Can’t believe the things I’ve managed to freecycle over the years just by placing an ad and picture… old appliances, ugly furniture, a pile of dirt (seriously!). As long as it works or otherwise not too destroyed.
Best of all people come to your house to pick it up and they’re (mostly) appreciative.
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Last summer, I helped with a garage sale. At the end of the day, someone put a notice on Craigslist for all the leftovers (curb alert?), and someone showed up within 10 minutes, and took everything, even the trash. He was happy, we were happy.
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♫ “One man’s trash, that’s another man’s come-up…” ♬
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Don’t even get me started; I’m still agged at Macklemore for spilling the beans.
I’ve been gong to thrift shops for years, “before it was cool!”
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When I lived in New Orleans I’d donate small stuff but leave big stuff on the curb but that was because I knew someone would always pick it up and use it long before trash day. I never saw a serviceable piece of furniture fail to get claimed.
I rescued and used stuff left on the curb myself.
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Agreed. The couple in question had unscrewed the legs and were in the process of lifting it into a dumpster. Aside from the waste, that can’t be very good for the dump truck.
I think some people just get in a hurry and don’t realize there’s donation sites all around them. They probably could have left it on the curb, but the dumpster was out of the way, so it might or might not have been seen and claimed, depending on whether someone else taking out their garbage saw it before the truck came. It was a pretty nice table too. If I hadn’t already had a kitchen table, I would’ve taken it.
I often find better (i.e. cooler) stuff at garage sales, on Craigslist and left on the curb than I find in stores. Even found a valuable antique too tarnished for anyone to spot it at a thrift store. An hour of polishing later it was ready to go on eBay for a handsome profit.
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Trillion-dollar coins are not worth the paper they’re printed on.
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Quite. No way do I have that much confidence in the full faith and credit of the US Treasury ô_Ô
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Given the lack of objective financial reporting in China, whatever economic turmoil will be pretty far along before the rest of the world is finally let in on. The West will be the last to know.
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You say that as though the CIA failed to anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union in '91!
Oh, wait…
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Man, wasn’t there a lot of chest thumping after the fact though.
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I have mixed feelings on this.
On the one hand, it’s absolutely true, and I’ve made this argument before.
On the other hand, while it’s amazing that we have almost universal access to electricity and clean water, just try living in a municipality in the United States without running water and electricity. Odds are, your home will be condemned. Ask the kids in the school my wife teaches in, when they go all day without eating some days, why they complain despite being privileged as fuck. It can be a good reminder that the rest of the world is poor, and that sometimes we whine. It can also be a tool used by the privileged, in order to tell less privileged people, “Shut up, you still have it good.”
The argument that “there’s no poverty in America” is Forbes-level douchebaggery. Or, another way of thinking of it: Tokyo may be one of the richest cities in the world, and being homeless in Tokyo would be cushier than being homeless in rural Afghanistan, but you’re still homeless.
It’s okay to admit that it sucks for some people in a wealthy country. It really is.
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I totally get your meaning, but personally I’d never make that argument.
My point was not to say that there’s no one who is underprivileged in the US; in fact, there are far too many.
Rather it was to state that no matter how badly we have it, there’s always someone who has it far worse…
That in no way means that we should not try to fix the problems that we do have, just because those problems are not as bad as they could possibly be.
I never stated nor even implied that it’s not.
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Where I live it is pretty much understood that anything left by the street on non garbage days are free for the taking. At this time of year people leave extra plants and potters as well as anything that didn’t sell at a garage sale. I got an antique wooden rocking crib for my niece this way.
The local Goodwill will even come by and pick stuff up if you can’t be bothered to take stuff to them. I see no reason to ever put in the trash stuff someone else can use.
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