David King

I just got rid of nearly half of my junk in the most efficient and positive way possible.

The problem

About eighteen months ago, I moved in to my current house. We were slated to start moving in on the first of February, so I took a week off of work which would have given us nine days to move and unpack. But the previous occupants of the house didn't actually leave the house until the fourth, which gave us only five days. Since we had to combine two households (this was my girlfriend and I moving in together), there was a lot of stuff to move and unpack, so most of the stuff got moved into the garage, but not unpacked. We figured that we'd unpack as we got around to it. Of course, we never actually did that. So we had half a garage full of crap that sat around not doing much.

Over a year and a half, we accumulated more stuff in the garage. Toys that the boy outgrew or stopped playing with, computer hardware that I replaced, clothes that wore or was outgrown (I've gained some weight since I moved, and the boy has grown from three years old to five). In the mean time, we acquired things around the house, like a giant bowl-type chair in the living room, appliances that we used once or twice, books that we finished, and other miscellany. While it's nice to have things like that, we didn't have the room for all of it, and it made it clumsy to get around the house and impossible to get around the garage. And it's a self-feeding problem: as I forget about something useless in the garage, but think I need it, I buy another one, and then soon I have two of these useless things in the garage. It's not just me, of course, Nearly everybody that I speak to has the same problem, but doesn't regard it as a problem, they just think that they have a lot of stuff, and having a lot of stuff means that you're well-off, right?

The solution

About a week ago, the stuff in the garage spilt over and blocked my access to our mailbox. That was the last straw. I was just overwhelmed by all of my stuff. I hadn't even seen most of it in eighteen months, so clearly I didn't need it that badly. So I posted an ad on Craigslist, indicating that the next Saturday at noon (today, as I write this) there would be a whole lot of stuff on my lawn, and that "if you can haul it, you can have it." There were books, lots of computer hardware (most of it relatively up-to-date), furniture, clothes, kids toys, dishes, appliances, other miscelaneous household stuff, and basically everything in my garage that I hadn't seen in a month or more.

At first, the post was flagged as a scam by a Craigslist moderator, but a re-post with "yes, I'm really giving away my stuff, I'll be at the house, and you can call me at 555-..." and it was accepted. Within hours, we had people calling us, asking if we had specific items. We told them that we didn't know, and that the reason we were giving it away was that we didn't want to go through it all.

We wanted to start today at noon, so we started unloading the garage and things around the house at 9:00. By 10:30, we already had people showing up to "get in on the good stuff." As time went on, people that noticed that we were leaving the house with more stuff would start to ask which rooms we were working on, and which rooms were left. "I'll hang around until you finish with your office; I want some more monitors". People showed up from all across the Bay area, some driving more than an hour to get here. Some called ahead, saying that they would be late, but wanted us to set aside an item (like a bed-frame for a guest room) for them. Some wanted specific items, some just wanted to see what we had, and at least one just came to see the spectacle. One family that came (and filled the back of their SUV to the brim) sounded like they were going to try to sell some of it at a flea-market in a few hours (and judging by the clothes their many kids were wearing, they needed the money more than I did). Some teenagers came by and took my my BDU's from the Army for paintballing, and a coleman stove for camping. Even the ice cream man stopped when going by, and picked up a device I had out there for recharging the freon in air-conditioners.

By 11:50 (ten minutes before we thought anyone would even start showing up), everything was gone but some clothes (which we donated to a local charity later that day). The front lawn, which was previously that day fully covered in piles of unwanted things, was empty.

Everybody wins

We got rid of a bunch of stuff that we didn't need or want, and people from all over the Bay Area ended up with things that they needed or wanted. If we'd have held a garage sale, we'd probably have made $50, maximum, and have ended up with most of the stuff still here (who travels an hour to buy someone else's crappy stuff?). Selling the stuff on eBay may not even have worked, and would have taken months to get rid of it all. If we'd have donated it to Goodwill, we'd have had to make several trips (our Goodwill doesn't do pick-ups) that would have taken all weekend. The dump would have cost us $27/load.

All-in-all, this was a great idea, and my house feels so much more liveable now. I'd highly recommend it to anyone that's feeling cluttered or has a garage full of things they haven't seen in a year. It probably only works if you actually have useful stuff that you just can't use (as opposed to a bunch of trash), but if that's you, consider giving it all away en-masse. I don't miss it.