The Get-Rid-Of-Crap-Every-Month Club

I do this all the time with Amazon&#x27;s Trade-In Program. A couple of times a year, I look at my book shelf and video games. If I haven&#x27;t read&#x2F;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.<p>Amazon then gives me a pre-paid shipping label.<p>I find the whole process enjoyable. &quot;How much will Amazon give me for this?&quot; is an exciting game. Then things go in the box, and you can visibly see the consumer weight you&#x27;re lifting off your shoulders. Then you get to see the fruits of your labors with a newly empty bookshelf.<p>The money they give me for it is only a small part of the benefits I feel from doing it. I <i>try</i> 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.)

This treats the symptoms, not the cause. The ultimate solution is buying less shit and buying what you <i>do</i> need local and used (usually on Craigslist). If you do this, you get these great benefits:<p>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.<p>Mr. Money Mustache has a great post on getting started with the religion that is Craigslist: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mrmoneymustache.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;08&#x2F;11&#x2F;get-rich-with-craigslist&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mrmoneymustache.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;08&#x2F;11&#x2F;get-rich-with-crai...</a><p>A couple of choice quotes:<p>&quot;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.&quot;<p>and<p>&quot;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.&quot;

&gt; <i>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.</i><p>And yet, Goodwill doesn&#x27;t hand out $10 checks for every donation.<p>I suspect that the money earned from selling &quot;another man&#x27;s treasure&quot; will rapidly decline.<p>At first, you&#x27;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&#x27;ll start receiving things that <i>I&#x27;d</i> send in - desk lamps that are 99% functional, but don&#x27;t quite bend in the angle that you want. Paperbacks that have been dropped into a puddle one too many times. An old thermos.

Finally, a way to get rid of my old, hazardous, household chemicals and get paid at the same time!

71 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&#x27;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.

Can we have a get-rid-of-medium-link-bait club?

I think to make this stick you need to stop net accumulating stuff, for example:<p>- Have a one-in-one out policy on gadgets, clothes, toys, games etc.<p>- Don&#x27;t buy DVD&#x2F;BluRays (only rent or stream), CDs (Spotify&#x2F;iTunes) or Books (Kindle) etc. (or use one in one out)<p>- Go paperless with your bills

Would 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?

Another getting-rid-of-shit option: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freecycle.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freecycle.org&#x2F;</a> Of course, it&#x27;s also a getting-new-shit-for-free source which may be irresistible for some people.

I think that this is a great idea and it kind of reminds me of <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;usesold.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;usesold.com&#x2F;</a> with an expanded scope. I&#x27;m constantly packing up things into bags for AMVETS, but having a box sent to me that automatically gets picked up would be awesome.

I use Goodwill for this. I take things there when I don&#x27;t need them anymore, and I go there looking for things I do need. Sometimes it feels like I&#x27;m just renting from them, when I donate something there, buy it later, then donate it again when I no longer need it.

I doubt the money generated from sales of <i>valuable crap</i> will cover the cost of your expenses.<p>The problem is that there is no such thing as &quot;valuable crap&quot;. But let&#x27;s assume people won&#x27;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&#x27;s more like &quot;one man’s treasure is every one else&#x27;s crap&quot;<p>The scientific explanation is <i>Endowment effect</i>.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Endowment_effect" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Endowment_effect</a>

&lt;shameless_plug&gt; I actually just built an iPhone app to help people get rid of stuff they don&#x27;t need called Give or Take: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;give-or-take-bay-area&#x2F;id651730017?ls=1&amp;mt=8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;give-or-take-bay-area&#x2F;id6517...</a>. Everything on it is free, so you won&#x27;t make any money off it. But sometimes giving stuff away can be faster and less stressful. &lt;&#x2F;shameless_plug&gt;

If you want to get rid of stuff, for practically zero effort (ok, yes, without the $10) then stick it on <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freelywheely.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freelywheely.com</a>, my site.<p>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.<p>You get the warm fuzzy feeling of making someone else happy, and you also get the things out from under your feet.

I think its a nice idea, the core problem is what others have identified: people will send crap.<p>What about charging people $120 &#x2F; year to sign up? and then they get their $10 &#x2F;month back. No one will make money, but if you&#x27;re motivated by helping out, and by relieving yourself of crap, it still could be worthwhile. And there&#x27;s still tax write-offs (if it&#x27;s made as a charitable org).

My 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&#x27;t have time to make sure I&#x27;m not throwing out my children’s baby pictures with my junk.<p>But this could definitely solve part of the problem, and provide some well needed motivation.

I really like this idea. I agree there&#x27;s a big activation energy to getting rid of stuff. Often I have things that are for specific tasks or activities, where it wouldn&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>I didn&#x27;t know about the Amazon trade-in program. That sounds great for books and games.

Or 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...<p>It&#x27;s really not that hard.

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.

Didn&#x27;t a group of MIT-ers just launch a product like this a few weeks ago? I can&#x27;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.

The average value of a box of stuff is below the cost of shipping it somewhere, unfortunately.

I 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&#x27;d get stuff worth selling.

Also, Am I the only one who now has Macklemore stuck in his head?

Better 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?

I&#x27;d do it, not sure how many months I&#x27;d be able to do it, as I often get rid of crap regularly.

I am totally in, if I get $10, _and_ UPS or USPS picks up the packed box!

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).