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The Get-Rid-Of-Crap-Every-Month Club
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- amoore 13y agoFinally, a way to get rid of my old, hazardous, household chemicals and get paid at the same time!
- akristofcak 13y agoHaha, no one said it would be risk-free :))
- will_work4tears 13y agoI'd do it, not sure how many months I'd be able to do it, as I often get rid of crap regularly.
- Lewisham 13y agoI 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 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.)
- akristofcak 13y agoWell, something good came out of this silly idea: I had no idea Amazon does this!! Thanks!
- benguild 13y agoYou can make a little bit more money by shipping them to Fulfilled By Amazon and selling them at a higher price with Amazon Prime. It's great for things that people don't buy enough to warrant their trade-in program, and there's the risk of the occasional return, but it gets it all out of your house with really cheap shipping.
- incision 13y agoGood idea. 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.
- famousactress 13y agoI've also used http://glyde.com/ http://glyde.com/ to do the same.
- bliker 13y agodo you know if they ship to EU?
- famousactress 13y agoThey do not :(
- mixedbit 13y agoNice approach. I personally can't force myself to get rid of books that I've read, which is not very rational, because I very rarely reread books. But other stuff I try to get rid of, or not buy at all.
- joecurry 13y agoExtremely interested in this idea - I've gotten to the point of pricing out FedEx-Kinko's to cut the bindings off ($1/ book actually) and then scanning them dual-sided into Evernote with searchable text (if you're a Pro member it scans inside PDFs). Still can get past the cognitive dissonance of letting my bookshelf go.
- kryten 13y agoNever get rid of books. I got rid of a lot of mine and thoroughly regret it. Why? I now have children who want to read them.
- cpeterso 13y agoThanks! I had no idea Amazon did this. 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.
- specialist 13y agoGiven the insulting price offered by Half Price, I just started giving all my books to my local public library. They mostly auction them to raise money. I may check out the Amazon Trade In option mentioned upthread.
- bumbledraven 13y agoI sold 50 or so of my books through Amazon when I moved. I usually got a great price through the trade-in program, which is nice because you get paid as soon as they receive the book from you, but if I didn't think the trade-in price was high enough, I just sold it through the Amazon seller program. This is a service where you ship your books to them, name the price you're willing to sell each one for, they warehouse them for you, and when someone buys one they ship it out and cut you a check. Pretty great.
- cpeterso 13y agoThanks for the Amazon Seller suggestion. I didn't know about that either. <:)
- tomkarlo 13y agoI wish I could just bar code in media and books, accept / reject the prices en masse and then generate the shipping label to send it to Amazon. I'd be a lot more inclined to send in stuff if the process was a little more streamlined. Update: apparently there's an Android app for that: http://www.amazon.com/Cash4Books-net-Cash4Books-Scan-Sell-Books/dp/B006CVVRBC http://www.amazon.com/Cash4Books-net-Cash4Books-Scan-Sell-Bo... ... wonder if it does games too.
- effbott 13y agoSomething like that already exists: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/05/one-click-selling/ http://www.wired.com/business/2013/05/one-click-selling/
- tomkarlo 13y agoThings like books and games are fluid enough markets that the difference in the price I'm going to get between Amazon and other outlets is going to be fairly small. I just want a faster way to scan in ISBN codes so I don't have to enter them manually. 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.
- stephengillie 13y agoI use Goodwill for this. I take things there when I don't need them anymore, and I go there looking for things I do need. Sometimes it feels like I'm just renting from them, when I donate something there, buy it later, then donate it again when I no longer need it.
- tkt 13y agoI really like this idea. I agree there's a big activation energy to getting rid of stuff. Often I have things that are for specific tasks or activities, where it wouldn't make sense to donate them to Goodwill. Having something like this would help, because you would know it would get used, but you don't have to figure out where to send it. At the receiving point, you could even coordinate with different charities - like the ones that want eyeglasses or old cell phones. So, some could get sold and some could get donated. I didn't know about the Amazon trade-in program. That sounds great for books and games.
- ddedden 13y agoI think that this is a great idea and it kind of reminds me of http://usesold.com/ http://usesold.com/ with an expanded scope. I'm constantly packing up things into bags for AMVETS, but having a box sent to me that automatically gets picked up would be awesome.
- jaggederest 13y agoThe average value of a box of stuff is below the cost of shipping it somewhere, unfortunately.
- _fs 13y agoCan we have a get-rid-of-medium-link-bait club?
- sp332 13y agoWhat's wrong with medium vs any other blogging platform?
- fallse7en 13y agoI'm wondering the same thing. I mostly enjoy articles from Medium, except that they seem to frequently present foreign-language articles that I can't read.
- obviouslygreen 13y agoI'd agree -- and do, generally speaking -- due to the very excessive proportion of crap from medium.com that gets upvoted lately, except this is by far one of the best pieces I've seen from that site recently.
- pavel_lishin 13y ago> 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 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.
- roc 13y ago> "I suspect that the money earned from selling "another man's treasure" will rapidly decline." That was my first thought: "people can fill boxes with crap worth less than ten dollars longer than you can cut checks for $10."
- gohrt 13y agoYou can write off Goodwill donations for tax deductions
- pavel_lishin 13y agoSure, but that's not Goodwill giving you straight cash - the point being that any given box typically does not contain $10+ worth of stuff.
- digz 13y agoNo, it's the government (or more specifically, taxpayers [today's or tomorrow's]) giving straight cash. It's also the only reason Goodwill exists.
- wnissen 13y ago70% of tax filers don't itemize and cannot take deductions. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=1001486 http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=10014...
- tijs 13y agoWould it not save everybody time and money if you simply drive to the thrift store every month. A recurring calender reminder will do... They do have thrift stores in the US as far as i know right?
- bluetshirt 13y agoIf 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.
- akristofcak 13y agoA man can dream :)
- panzagl 13y agoI think this could work if you kept a focus on hobby-type items. I think most of us with too many hobbies would be glad to send stuff if we thought it was going to an appreciative audience, and you'd get stuff worth selling.
- toasterlovin 13y agoThis treats the symptoms, not the cause. The ultimate solution is buying less shit and buying what you do need local and used (usually on Craigslist). If you do this, you get these great benefits: 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-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."
- colanderman 13y agoThe ultimate solution is buying less shit 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.)
- toasterlovin 13y agoCraigslist the non-cheap stuff. It only takes a few minutes to post something there (less time than going to Goodwill, probably), and you'll get some cash. 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.
- mjfl 13y agoreading 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).
- akristofcak 13y agoBeautiful simple life :)
- MattiasE 13y agoI experienced something similar a while ago as I was moving from Sweden to Japan. I could only ship a few things. Once moved, while waiting for those few shipped things to arrive, and living on yet fewer things in the meantime, I realized how few things we really need and how many things just tie us down and consume space. It's liberating to have just a few things.
- shva 13y agoOr you could just walk over to your local thrift store every month and give them your shit. Or used book store. Or used clothing store. Or record store. Or... It's really not that hard.
- avalaunch 13y agoIt's surprisingly hard considering the low benefit derived. First you have to find or buy a suitable box, which might need to be taped up. Then you have to decide what stuff is actually useless. And if you want to get the most out of your potential tax deduction, you also need to itemize everything you're giving away. Then you have to find the local thrift store. I have no idea where mine is. Then you have to find the time to either walk or drive there. For me, that'd be at least a half hour round trip. With a full time job, a baby, and a rapidly shrinking social life (did I mention I have a baby?), it hardly seems worth it to trade my time for such a small gain.
- toasterlovin 13y agoYou are making excuses. You need to be making a plan and executing on it. 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.
- avalaunch 13y agoAgreed with all except that I'm making excuses. By that I mean it's great advice for most things in life that you want to do. 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).
- tenpoundhammer 13y agoMy problem is trying to cull the wheat from the chaff. I have so much crap and so many things mixed in with it that I don't have time to make sure I'm not throwing out my children’s baby pictures with my junk. But this could definitely solve part of the problem, and provide some well needed motivation.
- toasterlovin 13y agoYou will feel so much better if you get junk and useless shit out of your life. Its a huge life improvement that requires no expenditure of money and may actually net you some.
- rythie 13y agoI think to make this stick you need to stop net accumulating stuff, for example: - 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
- akristofcak 13y agoone-in-one-out is a good one; we already implemented this in our household. still a lot of unimportant stuff hanging around getting moved from one apartment to the next... ;)
- weinzierl 13y agoI doubt the money generated from sales of valuable crap will cover the cost of your expenses. 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. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect
- nmullaney 13y ago<shameless_plug> I actually just built an iPhone app to help people get rid of stuff they don't need called Give or Take: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/give-or-take-bay-area/id651730017?ls=1&mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/give-or-take-bay-area/id6517.... Everything on it is free, so you won't make any money off it. But sometimes giving stuff away can be faster and less stressful. </shameless_plug>
- salgernon 13y agoThere's a similar app called "myfreestuff" that automates posting to freecycle mailing lists. Freecycle can be a pain due to latencies and no-shows. Liking forward to trying this one out. [edit] oops, it requires a facebook login. As a Facebook Luddite, I'll have to ask my wife to check it out for me.
- jsvaughan 13y agoIf you want to get rid of stuff, for practically zero effort (ok, yes, without the $10) then stick it on http://www.freelywheely.com 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.
- akristofcak 13y agoHave to check this out - thank you!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jasallen 13y agoI think its a nice idea, the core problem is what others have identified: people will send crap. 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).
- akristofcak 13y agoInteresting twist to the idea!
- jasallen 13y agoAlso, Am I the only one who now has Macklemore stuck in his head?
- lancewiggs 13y ago71 comments as I read this, and no mention of eBay. That says to me that eBay itself is broken, as time was that the only logical answer was to sell this sort of thing there. In New Zealand we have Trade Me, which is much larger than eBay in population adjusted terms. They didn't court the larger sellers, but instead maintained focus on helping people sell to people. They are also, in my mind, not making it easy enough to list and sell ones goods. The bar has raised.
- tharax 13y agoTrade Me has been gamed though, by importers and people using it as a virtual store for selling or trading their niche. I'm not sure what the answer is, but a way to filter out the high-volume sellers would be nice.
- brightsize 13y agoAnother getting-rid-of-shit option: http://www.freecycle.org/ http://www.freecycle.org/ Of course, it's also a getting-new-shit-for-free source which may be irresistible for some people.
- drharris 13y ago> Of course, it's also a getting-new-shit-for-free source which may be irresistible for some people 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.
- astangl 13y agoBetter idea -- stop acquiring crap in the first place. Where did all this crap come from, and was it crap when you acquired it, or did it morph into crap?
- aaronsnoswell 13y agoDidn't a group of MIT-ers just launch a product like this a few weeks ago? I can't remember the name - they had an iOS app, and you get one of three different sized boxes in the mail, then they sell your item for you, giving you some of the profit. It was on HN a few weeks ago.
- kuyan 13y agoYep - Sold. http://usesold.com/ http://usesold.com/
- fluxon 13y agoI am totally in, if I get $10, _and_ UPS or USPS picks up the packed box!