231–240 of 341 posts
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In a city I lived in bedbugs were common enough that the health department spends all weekend on major move-out dates tagging furniture with bedbug PSAs.
It seems like move-out day would be the great volume of stuff with the lowest likelihood of bed bugs.
A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…
So, it's surprising at first, but as others mention, it seems like a roughly functioning system: The students are rushed by the university to move, move, move. They do what they can which is not much for many, who don't yet have their life in order. Buying too much, too expensive, not downscaling in time, etc, why so surprising? Some universities have a decent system in place for temporarily holding that stuff for ot…
you'll have a dozen people immediately claim it and ask you to hold it for them, but actually getting rid of the item is another story. maybe 1/4 or less actually take it. I recommend donating to a thrift store (even one of the "evil" ones where the CEO makes $600k) or posting it in proper category, putting $1 for the price, and saying "free" in the item description. As opposed to using CL's "free" category.
I live near a major university town and one of the highlights of my year is move-out week. At dusk, a friend and I go dumpster diving at the apartments around campus. You definitely wear gloves and clothing you don't mind throwing out afterward, but MOST of the garbage is cleaner than you'd think. Usually the trash is pretty well picked-through by the time we get to it, but every year, we drive off with a pickup truc…
Seems straightforward enough. Laptops are portable and contain things of personal value (configuration, if nothing else!). Or just might -- if you're dumping stuff because you don't want to deal with it, so why would you deal with searching through your laptop to look for photos or incriminating messages or whatever? Or opening it up to pull the hard drive? That's work!
Formerly, they'd also be as much value to the owner the week after classes end as they were the week before, but maybe that's changed now? Do people rely only on phones and not use laptops for anything other than school?
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Undergraduate tuition at Duke starts at $65,000 USD/year. It shouldn't come at any surprise that a lot of spoiled kids who are funded by the International Bank of Mommy & Daddy are apathetic and wasteful. From: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit... "The median family income for a Duke student is $186,700. A significant portion of Duke students, 69%, come from families in the top 20% of earne…
> Undergraduate tuition at Duke starts at $65,000 USD/year. Does it? I don't know anything about Duke, but a lot of colleges I know of tell your tuition is around that price. However dig deeper and you discover it is almost impossible to not get scholarships thus making the real price cheaper. I know of one school near me that automatically gives everyone a 40% scholarship, then they look at your background to figure…
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We don't have to do anything, Craigslist already exists and works great. I've bought stuff from departmerting college students, the transaction is as simple as showing up and saying 'hi, are you X? Great, here's $50, thanks for The Thing'. Some people just cannot be bothered, and if they're wealthy they simply may not care about concepts like wasting money - doubly so if they grew up with money and have never had to…
My wife often sells things we are done with. If half the people who arrange a meeting to buy something show up she is doing well. Many times she has listed something for $10, has someone say "I really want this, will you take $20" - then not show up to meet. (we are always first come first serve, but if the first person offers $20...) My wife doesn't have a regular job so she has some time to deal with this - but her…
We have several times asked for a higher price just to weed out the non-serious people who will waste our time. We really just wanted to give it away to someone who would make good use of it, but charging too little lowers the odds of that happening.
A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…
Because transport costs more than the item? Especially if you are travelling by plane.
Sure there might be cheaper transport options but the opportunity cost of arranging them quickly dwarfs the value.
> Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items?
If you are in a university setting where maybe 500 people are leaving all at the same time, i imagine university admin may not be thrilled at the prospect of cleaning up after this.
A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…
My guess is that the college does not want to allow students to dump their mostly-garbage on the neighbors.
At the same time, wealthy students who will throw out items of value may feel they have better things to do than separate out items to donate. That’s especially true if they wait until the last minute.
Overall, separating items to donate from one’s trash is a way to avoid paying to dispose of trash at the dump and a way to perhaps be charitable or environmentally conscious. I’m not convinced it’s all that effective as an altruistic move. If the college sets up a place to dump for free, I’m not at all surprised many people take advantage of it without another thought.
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> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? It's very possible for the cost of transport to exceed the value of the goods, especially if one is flying to one's next destination. > Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This I can't help with. As far as I have seen, this is a common practice eve…
How is this something the police are concerned with? I mean municipal authorities, maybe, but police? Wouldn’t be the case in most of Europe at least.
A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…
> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? At my wife's alma mater, the way move out in the dorms worked was that you had 24hrs after your last final and then had to be gone. That didn't really leave a lot of time for a lot of people that had maybe two checked bags and a carry on to work with, and had spent the previous time focused on study…
Generous. When I was taking part in student exchange I had to be gone from the dorms a week before one of my finals.
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So the solution could be top down: - give 2-3 extra days for students to move out. - maybe partner with a few moving/freight companies? you’d bring them a lot of customers and they could provide a good rate.
But it’s a “solution” to a nonexistent problem. The vast majority of stuff people own sits unused for decades but gets moved around to whatever home you’re living in out of irrational loss aversion. This is human, and fine. But I’m 100% certain this author is grossly overestimating the value of the junk they believe they are “saving” and how much of it they will actually use. This is the rationalizing of a budding ho…