Saturday, May 28, 2005

Curbside Recycling

One of the things we enjoyed in China was that if we needed to dispose of something, we just put it outside our apartment door. Whatever it was - pizza boxes, maternity clothes, old shoes, poor copies of pirated DVDs - within hours, sometimes minutes, it was gone. We called it "curbside recycling."

We felt pretty good about it because we knew that the people who took everything needed it. One man in particular who we called Sneaky Man we believe often took most of it. He was retired and spent most of the time shuffling up and down the stairs in search of goods.

Here, I'm sure you'd be fined if you just put something outside your door. What to do? Today we took our first trip to the Salvation Army. So weird to have things like that here. I'm glad they have it, but I have to say it wasn't nearly as satisfying as curbside.

3 comments:

Gina Marie said...

Where would I have a garage sale? I have no garage! Quiet honestly, garage sales are not worth the money to me. When you figure in all the time you take pricing and setting up, unless you sell a big ticket item, you're making about $1/hr. I'm worth more than that.

All that said, I'll still help you. But believe me, when we move back to the states, I don't expect to ever host one of my own.

Chris B. said...

You have to factor in all the catharsis you get from having less junk in your house after a garage sale, combined with the fact that you know someone else will now have your junk and think it's valuable. When you factor all that in, it's way more than $1/hour.

Michelle said...

Shoot Gina.

I've been eyeing some of Megan's outfits. :)
We wouldn't be making it without the White Caps annual sale. Got a pac n play for $20.