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The great junk transfer is coming

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Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#111

Post by robocat »

eddy_chan wrote: post #34

Where I live we have 'council clean-up' days. It's a designated day once per year you can leave a reasonable amount of rubbish outside your house including old furniture, tools, utensils etc etc. The good thing is it's widely advertised and if you sort your stuff out properly and lay it out in an organised manner, lots of amateur collectors will come and take it away to re-sell or re-use leaving only a small amount o…

I suspect a surprising amount of stuff put on the street ends up with hoarders.

If I am putting stuff on the street, I try to trickle it out over the day, to spread the love, and hopefully avoid it all going to one person. The best is when it goes to someone who obviously needs it: perhaps a recent refugee immigrant, or a broke-arse single mum.

Picking up “valuable” stuff is a vice, so I try to only collect what is immediately useful to me or friends. It is however surprising the junk that people will take.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#112

Post by nlnn »

debbiedowner wrote: post #82
robocat wrote: post #70

Cleaning up after your parents is a gift you give to them: look at it like them paying it forward for all the times the cleaned up after you as a child. Psychologically, mentally, and physically, parents can have difficulty tidying up their stuff. My friend’s parents came from very poor backgrounds and had a lot of trash. The father had a shed full of stuff that was useful to him - he knew what was in it and how to u…

What are some examples of the obsolete tools? I can imagine a manual hand drill...

Some woodworkers still use manual drills (I own two, along with a brace and bit).

They're useful for very exact/delicate work, quiet drilling, and for getting into awkward places where an electric drill doesn't fit.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#113

Post by HideousKojima »

debbiedowner wrote: post #82
robocat wrote: post #70

Cleaning up after your parents is a gift you give to them: look at it like them paying it forward for all the times the cleaned up after you as a child. Psychologically, mentally, and physically, parents can have difficulty tidying up their stuff. My friend’s parents came from very poor backgrounds and had a lot of trash. The father had a shed full of stuff that was useful to him - he knew what was in it and how to u…

What are some examples of the obsolete tools? I can imagine a manual hand drill...

A brace and bit can be really useful if you're working with very soft or delicate woods. Also a bit and brace is fairly cheap, but good bits for them are lot pricier.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#114

Post by joshthecynic »

robocat wrote: post #70

Cleaning up after your parents is a gift you give to them: look at it like them paying it forward for all the times the cleaned up after you as a child. Psychologically, mentally, and physically, parents can have difficulty tidying up their stuff. My friend’s parents came from very poor backgrounds and had a lot of trash. The father had a shed full of stuff that was useful to him - he knew what was in it and how to u…

No post body was provided.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#115

Post by mikehain »

For years I've been engaged in an enormous decluttering project in the house I grew up in. Aside from filling a few huge dumpsters, I went on countless trips to scrap yards to recycle metal stuff, to Best Buy for electronics recycling, to auto parts stores to get rid of old motor oil, to thrift stores to donate useful things, and to a hazardous materials disposal facility where I had to pay nearly $700 to responsibly dispose of fertilizers, antifreeze, old paint, and so on. I also spent entire days digitizing huge amounts of photos and documents. It has been a very time-consuming project. My piece of advice to help prevent this kind of situation is to keep a big "thrift store donation bin" beside your trash and recycling bins.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#116

Post by wonderbore »

vulcan1964 wrote: post #92

What will happen to the heaps of digital junk stored on flash drives, hard drives, forgotten online accounts? I get overwhelmed thinking about organizing my own electronics files… wonder what my kids will do with it all.

> wonder what my kids will do with it all.

The good part about digital content is that you don't have to do absolutely anything with it.

Keep documents and photos accessible, forget the rest.

As we approach multi-generational widespread digital content "cloud" services, we'll see more and more companies allowing content to be easily passed over to the next generation — but just for reference.

I don't need my father’s iCloud photos, but it'd be nice to take a scroll in 20 years.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#117

Post by HideousKojima »

yardstick wrote: post #100

> And, even if they did want them, this Great Intergenerational Dump is happening just as millennials are facing a housing crisis, which will leave many of them either renting or living in much smaller homes. Grandma’s massive china cabinet is not going to fit. Seems like a weird comment given the possessions were already in a property in the first place, and the death of the parents will normally result in one of th…

If there is more than one child then the house will likely be sold and the proceeds split.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#118

Post by verve_rat »

nlnn wrote: post #112
debbiedowner wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples of the obsolete tools? I can imagine a manual hand drill...

Some woodworkers still use manual drills (I own two, along with a brace and bit). They're useful for very exact/delicate work, quiet drilling, and for getting into awkward places where an electric drill doesn't fit.

Yeah, I'm just starting out in woodworking as a hobby and a brace and bit is something I'm considering putting on the wishlist.

The useless tools might have been a treasure trove to the right person.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#119

Post by antisthenes »

SoftTalker wrote: post #50
olivermarks wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference here is that until recently things used to be well made and built to last. It's easy to buy a bunch of junky tools etc that might last a few years but it sometimes amazes me how people don't understand that owning a few good quality tools that will last forever is vastly preferable to giving them away. Same is true with a lot of other things, but of course this is only relevant if you're going to use t…

Don't overlook survivorship bias. There was plenty of cheap junk being sold 50 years ago.

Also, good things still exist, they are just marketed as commercial/industrial and carry the corresponding price tag.

But they will easily last 20-30+ years with good maintenance.

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