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I haven’t thought about that, but I have put a Facebook post to friends about taking in t-shirts and then making a donation on their behalf. I have some business cards coming to give to the employees who work for my typical auctioneers so they can give them to the property owners in an attempt to get clothing and shoes. The online auction company I frequent doesn’t often auction off shoes or clothing and when they do it is usually specialty items. But the Goodwill pick up idea is a good one!
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You could offer that, but I’m guessing most people would just be happy seeing the items go. One of the other things I’m looking into is working with cleaning crews that go into the vacated apartments at the end of the Spring semester. A person I know who does that as a side job says the students will leave tons of stuff. I don’t need the cleaning job, but if it means access to more stuff…..why not!
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I’d love to hear how that experiment goes. My feeling is you may get more calls for house clean outs (which actually exists as a business).
Grandpa dies and the kids want to sell the house. They want it all cleaned out, but only after they’ve taken what they want. Could be some valuable stuff left over, but you also have to take stuff to the dump. Good news that this is a service people pay for. Bad news is grandpa could have been a gross hoarder.
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I have thought of something similar. I have considered buying a donation box and placing it at a college (especially at end of semesters). I know that the boxes are supposed to go to support a cause so I could just offer 10% of the sell price as a donation on eBay. A used donation box would probably cost a minimum of 500 dollars, and I could paint it. Then I would have to get approved somehow by property managers to strategically place the box.
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We linked to info on donation boxes here: http://www.scavengerlife.com/2014/08/scavenger-life-episode-142-scavenging.html
Turns out you don’t have to be a charity to have a donation box. If you look closely, many boxes just have a big Recycle symbol and say nothing about a charity. Only local rules might prohibit it.
I guess the key is making an agreement with the owner of the land where you would put the box.
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Retro, funny I had a kind of similar idea last week. I was thinking of putting advertising in one of the local free “rag mags” advertising free home electronics disposal/recycling. The challenge would be what to do with the truly worthless stuff of which I’m sure there would be a lot.
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I sorta did this before but from a point where I told people I would buy their unwanted items or yard sales. I don’t think people would trust you to just take stuff to Goodwill out of the kindness of your heart and people get weird when they think your making money off of them. Like if your at a yard sale and buy a bunch of clothes or shoes that won’t fit you and they want to know why, telling them your gonna sell it on eBay and suddenly your somehow stealing from them or something (I’ve been told to leave yard sales for being honest so now I just say I’m buying for my kids or wife or something).
What I did was go to yard sales, find anything I thought was worth it and buy that first and then give them a business card and said I paid per pound for left over yard sale items. 1 out of 10 would call me back and I could fill up a truck bed with bags for less then $100. I just used one of the $5-$10 luggage scales and plastic trash bags. Weighing stuff other than clothes can be a pain unless its in a box and you have some rope tho. Tho most people will only give you clothes but sometimes I would get a whole house of glassware and they wanted me to provide my own boxes and stuff so I’d have to figure that out heh.
I will say with clothes about 50% will go to Goodwill because of holes, stains or just being unwearable but I only ever paid 10 to 25 cents a pound so giving away half was not even that bad. I find most things you buy in bulk have a value but unless you want to handle a bunch of $2-$5 items on eBay you will need a flea market or yard sale or just donate all the junk every week.
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Cebanak, your comment about people at yard sales is so true. It seems people these days are so scared of being taken advantage of that they make completely illogical decisions when they find out you are in some way benefiting from their sale. I’ve actually had people on multiple occasions tell me they would give their stuff to Goodwill before they would sell it to me at a discounted price. That’s just pure emotional spite there. They are basically saying they would rather make no money than allow me to get something at a good price.
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