Environment - Step 5: Get Rid of Unwanted Stuff in an Enviro-Friendly Way

When I was in my mid-20s, I bought my grandparents' house - as is. And by "as is", I mean with most of their stuff still in it. My grandfather had had a second stroke that left him wheelchair-bound, and my grandmother, at 87, was in no position to take care of him or their house by herself. So, they moved into a senior community that had independent living facilities through nursing home care. My grandmother moved into an independent living apartment that only required a few pieces of furniture to fill it; my grandfather went into a nursing home room that already equipped. Everything else was left behind in the house. Relatives did take some stuff, some stuff I knew right off the bat that I wanted to keep, and I got help gathering up all of the leftover furniture and putting it into the garage for the Salvation Army to pick up. But, there was small stuff lurking everywhere in the house. But since I had space to store it, I didn't agressively go through it and purge unnecessary things. Then my husband and I got job offers in another city and had to move all of this crap with us. And our new house didn't have nearly as much storage space as my grandparents' house had. So the time had come for me to actively go through this mess. And I did it through these 4 environmentally friendly ways:

eBay
Hey, why not recycle and make money at the same time? There were a few books of my grandfather, mostly textbooks over 60 years old, that I researched on eBay and found that there was a market for them. Not only did I sell all but one of them, I knew that books that my grandfather loved (but I had no use for) got into the hands of people who would love them, too.

Garage sale
Our development holds a bi-annual garage sale and after sorting through all of the stuff and determining what we didn't want, we found that a large portion of it was sellable. So, we registered with the HOA to be a participant in the garage sale and got lucky that a lot of people came out shopping. We made around $330 that day!

Donation
The remaining items that we didn't sell, we donated to local charities (we made sure to keep detailed records of what we donated so that we could claim these items on our taxes). If you live in the DC area, a number of charities will actually pick up your items right from your doorstep, which is not only convenient for you, but also saves on CO2 emissions (since the charity's truck will pick up items from all donating homes in your area, instead of each separate home driving to drop off their items at the charity's HQ). These charities include the Lupus Foundation of America (http://www.lupuspickup.org/) and Vietnam Veterans of America (http://www.vvapickup.org/). You don't need to be home when they pickup your donation; you just need to place your items on your front porch. They will leave a donation receipt on your front door knob.

Freecycle
For those items that are highly usable, but not accepted by charities, I use Freecycle to find them good homes. The types of things I'm talking about are unused, loose diapers; unused food; leftover shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, perfume, etc; candles; used binders and other office supplies; and the list goes on. To find a Freecycle group near you, go to http://www.freecycle.org/. There you will find links to all of the local groups' Yahoo! groups, which you will need to join in order to participate. Once you join, you will receive an email from the group moderator about format and content guidelines for posts. You may be thinking, aren't you afraid about meeting up with perfect strangers to give them stuff? I was, but I never meet in person to hand stuff off - I just put the stuff out on my porch and let them pick it up when it's convenient. Plus, the people who are part of my local Freecycle group are focused on trying to get good stuff! To date, I've posted 60 items/groups of items to Freecycle, with all but a few being taken.

So, the next time you need to get rid of some stuff, try to use one of these 4 ways which get the items reused by those people who need or love them.

Take Care,
Kara