The Get-Rid-Of-Crap-Every-Month Club
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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 game. Then things go in the box, and you can visibly see the consumer weight you're lifting off your shoulders. Then you get to see the fruits of your labors with a newly empty bookshelf.
The money they give me for it is only a small part of the benefits I feel from doing it. I try to do the same with Goodwill donations of old clothes, but I have to admit some laziness in actually getting down to the Goodwill (which is essentially zero difference from driving the box to the UPS Store. Procrastination is a weird and wonderful thing.)
I make a point to check to see if any used, Fulfilled by Amazon copies are available when I'm about to buy a book.
It's used pricing and the weight of Amazon behind the purchase without the cost of shipping thanks to my Prime membership.
Still can get past the cognitive dissonance of letting my bookshelf go.
I now have children who want to read them.
Having one less book shelf is effectively saving enough per year that you could probably pay for buying back all the books you'd ever re-read on that shelf. And if you ever move, the cost and annoyance of keeping books just skyrockets.
I have a lot of books I love, but 90% of books are essentially disposable vehicles for information of transient value.
Also, for text-only, transient stuff like business books and history books (that I'm unlikely to read twice), I buy a lot of Kindle stuff now.
The decision making is forcing valuable reflections!
The FAQ says they buy textbooks, but the page shows recent non-textbook books I've purchased as items I could "get up to $10.98". Have you sold books before? I usually sell my books to my local Half Price Books, but they pay a pittance.
I may check out the Amazon Trade In option mentioned upthread.
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.
Sold seems like it might be good for hard-to-price items like antiques, but for media it just seems like a way to end up paying two companies' fees instead of just one.
1. You prevent all the waste included in manufacturing new shit 2. You can usually sell it later for about what you paid for it 3. Since you usually have to shop quite a bit to find what you need, it eliminates the highly addictive, instant gratification feedback loop that comes from buying online or in a store and ultimately leads to less buying.
Mr. Money Mustache has a great post on getting started with the religion that is Craigslist: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/08/11/get-rich-with-crai...
A couple of choice quotes:
"You can also use it as a free way to “store” your unused goods. I didn’t hesitate to sell my papasan chairs today, because I know if I ever need them back, I can open up Craigslist and find plenty more just like them at any point in the future."
and
"So I view Craigslist not just as an Environment Saver – by preventing the unnecessary manufacturing of a bunch of new stuff – but also a Community Machine – connecting millions of people to do real activities together, as opposed to the soul sucking model of big corporations stamping out stores across the world, staffing them with minimum wage workers, connecting them to a stream of wasteful products flowing straight from China, and having us all drive into the big boxes every day to bring home SUV-loads of it which will soon end up buried in a landfill."
Unfortunately some of us have relatives who insist on gifting us shit, regardless of how tactfully we try to ask them not to. I'd love to join a club like this. (Right now Goodwill suffices, but there's definitely non-cheap stuff we give away just because we don't have time to deal with it.)
But yeah, the gifting culture drives me kind of bonkers too. I intend to establish Gift Truces with as many people in my life as possible come January 1st of 2014 (since, mathematically, I should be even with most people at that point). Or, if a person won't go for that, I'll ask them to donate to charity in my name instead of give me a gift.
http://www.nobenjam.in/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5849748
I imagine it could self fund through ads - if someone is on a waiting list but misses out, let them know with adword ads based on the product they failed to get for free.
This year so far: broken iPhones, a no brand android tablet that sucks, a pile of PMRs that don't work, a portable digital tv that was missing a proprietary power supply, an old HP server, a netbook with a nasty case of the clap, a naff 1998 vintage HP Omnibook, clothes that are too small for our children, a car (which instantly cost me £550 in repairs), a crap desktop pc full of spiders. Ugh.
It wasn't stuff i needed or wanted. It was stuff they didn't want and couldn't be bothered to get rid of.
One day I will just say no. No to everything. No gifts, no charity etc.
Get rid of it all.
The only problem is that I've been there. For a while I didn't own much and people thought I was a charity case and gave me more things.
The cycle is impossible to break.
Perhaps I'm too polite.
The problem is that most people think that things are status and people think improving status is how to help a person. Status does not concern me so I'm doomed.
You're definitely right. However, it does help those of us who understand that there is a problem push ourselves in the right direction and not only embrace the start of a solution but help us make it part of our lives, which makes it far easier and more honest to advocate the same.
Seriously, if you have some stuff, here's how I would get rid of it on Craigslist:
1. Valuable Stuff
Take nice pictures and some time to write a decent description and get the full value of what it's worth.
Or
Spend almost zero time on a bare bones post and get half of what it's worth.
2. Worthless Crap
Post it as a bulk lot and get like $10 for everything
Or
Donate to thrift store and get a tax deduction
Either way, you'll probably get more than the $10 per box that this service would offer, plus you'll not needlessly ship stuff all over the place.
It's pretty good, I didn't know it was this intricate.
Or just let people decide what's worth buying for themselves. If they decide they'll get utility out of it, great. If not, then they don't have to buy it. No need to foist your desires on others.
But even if you treat the cause, these symptoms won't disappear...
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 sending things in - nice books, perhaps art, a few desktop toys and things like that. But after a few months, you'll start receiving things that I'd send in - desk lamps that are 99% functional, but don't quite bend in the angle that you want. Paperbacks that have been dropped into a puddle one too many times. An old thermos.
That was my first thought: "people can fill boxes with crap worth less than ten dollars longer than you can cut checks for $10."
I find this strangely endearing.
I feel that feeling with every fucking object in my apartment, and if it weren't for my friends and my wife, I'd probably be one of those hoarders, sleeping in a 3x3 foot area surrounded by garbage.
I wish I could find a photo of my room as a teenager. I wasn't a Collyer, but you couldn't see my floor.
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 tins and baskets! Everyone gets them full of cookies or gifts, no one wants to throw them away, and no one actually has a use for them.
My co-worker and I did the master sorting -- sending stuff to different departments or to the trash. I saw it all. Her summary? "People send us their garbage!"
And that's the stuff that people could be bothered to drive to the store, look a person in the eye, and drop off without too much embarrassment. This was stuff they genuinely thought was valuable.
A box you can fill with crap from your garage?
Well.
Paying $1 for that sight unseen is probably too much. $10 plus postage is . . . endearingly naive.
liketwice.com has a program like the OP is suggesting, but they have a short list of requirements for what they accept. they review the stuff and make you an offer that you can accept or reject. i imagine if they get through two or three holey shirts or smelly shoes they just send you a $1 offer (or $0) and move on.
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.
As a counter-anecdote, there is a place in my area that buys used tools & equipment from people and then sells them back. They're one of my favorite places -- I'd much rather buy a used Milwaukee than a brand new cheapie -- and they seem to do pretty good business. Lots of stuff coming and going all the time.
You might bake in some kind of tracking & rating system if you're concerned about resale value. If a particular user sends in too many boxes of stuff you can't get $15+ for, reduce their payment accordingly.
This is part of the reason I started off my comment by imagining what an idealized HN reader would donate. That's the kind of person you want to attract. But I genuinely wonder if there are enough of those people - the fact that you're paying them a pittance turns a gift of generosity (e.g., donating to a cancer charity) into a job.
Most people think thrift stores sell the stuff people drop off there. That's far from true. They get their product from a lot of places -- retail seconds, charities, sometimes even new.
Direct donations are the worst. It's still positive expected value after you collect, sort, and label it all, but sometimes only just barely. Ever notice thrift shop donation centers sometimes have terrible hours? They don't want the stuff that bad!
In direct donation, people give you things they think you're going to sell. They think they're doing you a favor, they think everything has to have some value and anyway, you guys are the experts and at worst you'll just throw it away, right? You get lots of garbage.
One of the things I think people don't understand is the "where it came from" factor. My tennis shoes have some value to me, even though they're pretty beat up. I know where they've been. They've always been mine. I'd cheerfully spend $40 to get them back if they'd disappeared tomorrow.
But to a stranger they're stinky, dirty, beat up, and they don't know where they've been. Zero value. Negative value, even.
Anyway, when people are assessing their own stuff for resale value, they do a pretty terrible job, and it's my private theory that the above is responsible.
Anyway.
The boxes we got with the highest value were from charities. Those signs that say, "Donate your quality used goods to the center for (cancer|mental retardation|war veterans)" . . . those goods eventually end up being sold to thrift stores, and the typical quality is amazing compared to what people drop off. Five times better. Ten times better. More. Depends on the source.
Psychology is weird, and in the thrift business, it can be the difference between a (very) positive and (very) negative profit margin. Just what people choose to give you. I certainly can't begin to explain it, and would never have expected that the difference in the quality of donations to different causes would be so wide.
Just be careful, is all. In my (limited, unscientific, yet still statistically significant) experience as a junk sorter, stuff coming from the "we'll take your junk and resell it" message performs the worst. The very worst. "For the children" seemed to be about the best.
I have absolutely no idea how "purify your life" will do. Could be awesome. Could be terrible. I'm not optimistic, but who knows. People are weird.
If it does poorly, though, seriously considering donating the $10 to a (specific!) charity. That should help a lot.
One solution that occurred to me: sharing X% of proceeds back with the donor. The idea being that this would encourage people to send more objectively valuable stuff (though as you point out people are terrible at estimating value).
I like really like the idea of donating to specific causes. Did the thrift shop pay the charities a portion of the proceeds in exchange for the boxes?
Sort of. It would have been impossible to track that, but corporate did have some idea what the average box (from a particular source) was worth, and paid them that amount. Or maybe the charity set the price. I don't know. I just know it was different for different sources, and well justified.
[1] http://support.cancerresearchuk.org/support-us/donate/donate...
- Have a one-in-one out policy on gadgets, clothes, toys, games etc.
- Don't buy DVD/BluRays (only rent or stream), CDs (Spotify/iTunes) or Books (Kindle) etc. (or use one in one out)
- Go paperless with your bills
I unsubscribed for this reason after I just couldn't pass up 60 free mason quart jars. Right before we moved. Want to know how many lacerations I got from cleaning them? But, I did sell them for $30 on craigslist when it was all said and done, so there's that.
The problem is that there is no such thing as "valuable crap". But let's assume people won't send you crap but only boxes they consider themselves worth more than $10. You will have a hard time find a buyer that pays $10 . In reality it's more like "one man’s treasure is every one else's crap"
The scientific explanation is Endowment effect.
[edit] oops, it requires a facebook login. As a Facebook Luddite, I'll have to ask my wife to check it out for me.
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.
What about charging people $120 / year to sign up? and then they get their $10 /month back. No one will make money, but if you're motivated by helping out, and by relieving yourself of crap, it still could be worthwhile. And there's still tax write-offs (if it's made as a charitable org).
But this could definitely solve part of the problem, and provide some well needed motivation.
I didn't know about the Amazon trade-in program. That sounds great for books and games.
It's really not that hard.
Find out where your local thrift shop is (30 seconds on Google), figure out what other errands need to get done in that part of town, put the shit you don't want near the front door or in the garage. Next time you run an errand near the thrift store, put your pile of crap in the car (loose, no need for a box). Drop it off while running your other errand.
Strart by telling yourself that you will do something and it will get done, but start by telling yourself that something cannot be done and it will not.
My point is that in this instance I just don't care. Not enough anyway. I could do exactly as you describe to minimize the cost but the value gain is so minimal that it doesn't warrant the effort. Simple cost/benefit analysis with the result being that the cost is too high (even if it's really low).
One of the highest value activities for me is spending time with my kid. It's a hard sell that getting ridding of extraneous crap is worth it if it costs me even 10 minutes I could have instead been spending with my kid.
Why do you value getting rid of crap so highly?
WHEREAS, if I lived in a suburban area, which I assume you probably do, finding anyplace this would be substantially harder to achieve, and ideas like the OPs/amazons, would actually be pretty awesome.
That being said, suburban problems are an often ignored market in the startup world, presumably because the major tech hubs are in large cities. How many startups focus on homeowners, for example? I would love a company that made taking care of my home effortless. It's so much more of an ongoing challenge than I had originally anticipated. Even if you decide to hire others to take care of the lawn, the repairs, and the general upkeep, it's a giant pain in the ass. You have to research, schedule, research again when the first handyman flakes on you, schedule, reschedule, reschedule again, negotiate, watch over them to make sure they do a good job, answer all their questions (especially true for landscaping), stand up for yourself when they try to rip you off, research some more and schedule someone else to finish what the first handyman started but failed to finish, negotiate again, watch over the new handyman, and hope you know enough to make sure they did what was promised.
I want a company that I pay a monthly fee to and everything is just taken care of. No scheduling. No negotiation. No questions interrupting my work day. They keep tally of what needs to be done and just do it. I'd pay 500/month for that - maybe more. That's assuming they take care of maintenance and repairs. If it's just maintenance, I'd pay 200/month.