My mom and I typically develop weird habits in parallel and unbeknownst to one another. Our latest continent-spanning tic: we're both addicted to furniture listings on Craigslist. I got hooked when, within 24 hours of scanning listings, I stumbled across a Mission-style sofa selling for roughly a third of what a new one would cost. Within four days, we had a new couch.
What happened to our old sofa is a mystery: we had agreed not to move it, but no charity would pick it up, what with the cats having denuded the arms of all padding and fabric during what appears to be a sustained feline fatwa against upholstered furniture. When I left our old apartment, the couch huddled forlornly against a wall in the living room. The back gapped open where the cats had torn it from top to bottom. Still, I like to pretend someone took my couch to a farm, where it can play with other couches all day.
On one level, I don't blame the charities for turning down the couch. I used to work in a thrift store, and I was amazed at the shoddy crap people try to unload. Someone needs to hold the line against the idea that poor people deserve ugly belongings. On another level ... dammit, it would have been nice to unload the thing. But few people seem to want a supremely comfortable, albeit shredded couch.
So when I read "Free Sofa Is Priceless to Many" in today's SFChron, the writer's description of how fast her sofa went following a PennySaver ad ripped up the scab covering my free-floating furniture guilt:
Enter the folks at Penny Saver, who will run a free classified ad, up to 15 words, for used household items that are $30 or less. Since we were offering our sofa for free, our ad appeared at the top of the first page under "Free Stuff."
[...]
We were completely unprepared for the flood of telephone calls that resulted.
The first call was from a young man who asked for directions to our home, saying he'd come by after work. Twenty minutes later he phoned and said, "I'm on my way right now." He and his wife and baby arrived in a beat-up truck, and the young couple took one look at the sofa and hauled it away. After that it was a matter of turning down 32 or so callers. We stopped counting at that point. Some of them spoke in broken English and some of them sounded weary yet hopeful, but they were all unfailingly polite, even in their disappointment.
Oh, my guilt will be with me all day.
But my bigger point is this: I am getting a kick out of trolling Craigslist for bargains because a lot of the stuff that gets sold there goes for ridiculously low rates compared to what it costs new. Such bargains! Thank you, fellow proponents of everything-is-disposable mentality!
And I'm bargain-hunting not because I have to, but because I can. I can spout lip service about re-using perfectly good consumer items and being a smart consumer, but the fact of the matter is, these are conscious choices on my part, and being able to make those choices is a luxury. Any material comfort gotten cheaply is a luxury on a monetary level; it's the human cost of those purchasing decisions that has yet to be factored into the real price.
It's nice that the person writing the article found the callers to be polite. Perhaps it's because there's a small amount of money involved in the transactions off Craigslist?
My husband and I didn't have such good experiences with Freecyle (http://www.freecycle.org/). I love the idea of Freecycle, and I might use it again in the future, but the fact that the stuff is free causes an incredible feeding frenzy.
We got something like 25 emails about a (of all the ridiculous items) five-foot garden hose, and some of the people were *really* aggessive. They seemed to feel they just couldn't go on without that tiny, useless hose.
We also received a nasty call (from someone who somehow found our number) and a some nasty emails when we Freecycled a car. I guess the people who didn't get it were a little ticked.
Posted by: Anne | 2005.10.27 at 11:44
Anne, thanks for the first-person experience. We're about to post our moving boxes on Craigslist (anyone in the Bay Area want some moving boxes? Includes many dishpacks and glassware boxes (with foam sleeves), 2 wardrobe boxes, 1 appliance box? For cheap?) and, if that doesn't unload them, then move on to FreeCycle and PennySaver.
Posted by: Lisa | 2005.10.27 at 15:56
I gave away my hot tub through craigslist. The guy who took it seemed nice, and I liked to think that he was able to have an item that he wouldn't normally be able to afford, and I was able to get that thing off my tiny patch of lawn so that I can put in a garden. Win-win!
Everyone contacted me through the anonymous email address, and they provided me with a number to call them. Everyone that I called was very nice.
Posted by: Erica | 2005.10.27 at 21:38
Toss a cheap throw over the thing and you have a new piece of furniture... more or less. We bought a lovely armchair -- perhaps you or Phil had occasion to sit in it -- that our eldest cat felt compelled to utterly destroy. We bought a nice cover and it looks good. Same with our couch. The boy... well, he had one too many pudding massacres. And yet you might never know it, but for this confession. Cheap throws! They're like penicillin for living room furniture!
Posted by: Ex-Monkey Ben | 2005.10.28 at 00:59
Oh, Ben, you saw our old couch. The cats had massacred TWO separate slipcovers in addition to the couch -- they really had it in for the furniture. If slipcovers and throws are the penecillin of couches, these cats are the antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Hence our moving to the Mission model, as it's got a LOT of wood. The cats have also left the upholstered parts alone, thanks to us spraying the couch daily with this stuff we got at Petco.
The next step: giving away at least one of our two denuded armchairs. The hideous recliner, alas, will be staying in the house, as it's the cats' favorite place to sleep -- Zito on the seat and Isabel on the back or inside.
Posted by: Lisa | 2005.10.28 at 09:04
I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. I felt compelled to respond to your comment about how people try to unload their crap on poor people. Someone who was struggling once said to me, "The poor already have crap. They don't need any more, thank you!" Something we should all remember!
Posted by: panasianbiz | 2006.07.19 at 12:50