71–80 of 120 posts
If you want to get rid of stuff, for practically zero effort (ok, yes, without the $10) then stick it on http://www.freelywheely.com , my site. Everything that gets posted gets more than a handful of people requesting it. Someone will come to get it, when it suits you, and take it away. You get the warm fuzzy feeling of making someone else happy, and you also get the things out from under your feet.
I do this all the time with Amazon's Trade-In Program. A couple of times a year, I look at my book shelf and video games. If I haven't read/played them within the last 6 months, and have no compelling reason to hold onto them for the foreseeable 6 months, into the box they go. Amazon then gives me a pre-paid shipping label. I find the whole process enjoyable. "How much will Amazon give me for this?" is an exciting ga…
Update: apparently there's an Android app for that: http://www.amazon.com/Cash4Books-net-Cash4Books-Scan-Sell-Bo... ... wonder if it does games too.
If only it was as simple to make a business out of a cockamamie idea as it is to come up with the cockamamie idea in the first place.
reading this is kind of funny as I have a bed, sheets, 4 outfits, a towel, toothpaste, toothbrush, detergent, and deodorant all in my apartment (just moved out of parents home).
> The cost of postage and the check along with all the processing costs are covered from the money generated from sales of valuable crap. Remember: one man’s crap is another man’s treasure. And yet, Goodwill doesn't hand out $10 checks for every donation. I suspect that the money earned from selling "another man's treasure" will rapidly decline. At first, you'll have the type of people we imagine other HN readers sen…
[1] http://support.cancerresearchuk.org/support-us/donate/donate...
reading this is kind of funny as I have a bed, sheets, 4 outfits, a towel, toothpaste, toothbrush, detergent, and deodorant all in my apartment (just moved out of parents home).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to work at a thrift store. The amount of value we could extract from the average box of stuff dropped off to donate . . . was nowhere near $10. In fact, a lot of it couldn't be sold at all -- it just got thrown away. Broken toys, clothes with holes, dirty shoes, smoke-damaged, water-damaged, and just plain damaged stuff. Ugly nick-nacks, beat up plastic cups, dated books no one wants to read. We got so many ti…
This is really helpful perspective, thank you! (the author)
As a good example, some friends of mine who work in a networking team will turn up with a land rover and collect whatever pile of old computer equipment you have; they aggregate it and sell it to scrap merchants and the proceeds go towards drinks at their office christmas party. Their management have concluded the fuel costs are less than the recovered beer costs, and I know I can reliably get rid of old tech I don't need and even if it doesn't go to a charity as such it's going to buy beer for people I know and like.
The point here is that making it almost entirely free of effort on my part, plus at least the illusion that the money raised is going for something I consider to be of at least marginally more than zero value, makes it a proposition I'm quite happy to work with.
Or: Find a way to make people feel at least a little good about making as little effort as possible; the marginal value of a slight good feeling to me is far more than $10 especially if the $10 requires more effort to get.