That’s exactly what I was talking about. This place will accept good used suits, etc., for these men when they go on interviews.
Tom
I grew up shopping at Goodwill and Salvation Army. My family didn’t have much money, and we could really stretch the clothing budget by shopping at resale shops.
I really hate the idea of throwing all this stuff away…heck, you’d think it would at least be recyclable! (you can make paper from fabric, after all). My hubby’s going to throw it in his car and take it to the unmanned Goodwill drop, and we’ll just hope for the best.
Redwolf
yeah, the things you put at the curb are still your things so you can’t just leave them—if no one takes it then it is our job to dispose of it. And they can’t get wet, etc. You don’t want to contribute to a trash problem in your town! Luckily we have a Goodwill nearby to take clothes and things like that to.
Once a year our town has a day that you can put out big things for trash collection and you should see people cruising the streets for stuff then. I think they like to fix things, something which the Goodwill is not any longer set up to do.
The un-manned drop off sounds good to me. You have done your best. If something is stolen, well probably whoever steals it is not in the best situation. I know it isn’t right, but they could need something pretty bad.
I don’t mind so much someone stealing stuff (as you say, someone who would steal from a Goodwill drop-off is probably desperate enough to really need that stuff!), but those drop-offs often get overfull, and then rain damages the contents and they end up being hauled off to the dump anyway.
Ah well…at least I’ll have tried!
Redwolf
Here’s something different:
Heard about it on the news, haven’t tried it much yet, but it’s an interesting concept. Perhaps another possible option for some who have stuff that could use a new home?
At my house, we do a really good job wearing clothes out before buying new stuff. Anything that can’t be repaired is evaluated and the good patches of fabric are cut up for quilts. (Love quilting.) Some less quilty bits might find new use as cleaning rags… parts from cotton shirts are great for cleaning whistles. 
Like Susan, I live in Utah and here one of the big places is Deseret Industries. In fact, I like to shop there. Can’t see any point in spending $15 or $20 on a pair of jeans when I could buy the same thing lightly used at DI for $5. I’ve got all sorts of great stuff there, plus it really helps our pocket book.
Additionally, I personally find some of the styles that grace the regular stores a bit distasteful and sometimes lacking in, um… cloth. 
It seems like it is easier to find things that are more to my personal taste (clothing that covers where is should/how I prefer it to, not too tight, colors I actually like, etc.) at the DI more often than at the regular stores. At least for now. 
As for donating, I’ve never had DI turn something away. Granted, you gotta drop it off, but they’ll take it. That there are “charities” turning perfectly good stuff away blows my mind. Don’t get it. 
It seems a real shame that so much stuff which still could be of use to someone gets trashed into the dump. People somewhere could use it, guess sometimes it just too much trouble to get it to them???
When we lived in California a few years back, I pulled a really good micowave out from the top of the dumpster next to our building. It was a little older but clean and had been well taken care of. My guess is who ever it was just wanted something bigger and upgraded; not knowing or perhaps not caring about what to do with the old one, they chucked it. Our microwave was nearly dead and the one someone didn’t want anymore fit us just perfectly… today it still works great. It was a real blessing right when we needed it.
One man’s “junk” really can be another’s treasure. 
(Mmmm… perhaps that’s “too much” info?) 
That really is a shame. (Imagines all the perfectly good clothing and perfectly good fabric going to waste in this country. Enough to help clothe the world by day and wrap them up in warm quilts at night. )
Anyhoo…
Sara (who stumbles off to bed being that it’s waaaay past her usual bedtime)
I too like thrift shops, but have come to realize that my old stuff is mostly junk, and so is everyone else’s.
This isn’t about clothes, but I think it illustrates the dilemma that charitiable organizations have to confront.
Two years ago, we did a lot of work on our house. The previous owner had installed an “in-law” apartment in 1987. As part of that, he put in a high quality combination GE washer/dryer unit. I don’t think it was ever used from 1987 to 1991, when we used bought the house and we might have used it a dozen times in the following 12 yrs. (We had another washer/dryer.) It was in perfect condition, with all the original manuals. We tried for weeks to find an organization to give it to, with little success. The explanation was that it is not helpful to give a poor family older appliances for which parts are not available, repairs are expensive etc. Eventually we found a local woman’s shelter that agreed to take it if we’d deliver it.
Similarly, don;t even think about trying to give away a 5 year old pc with windows 95 on it. A few organizations collect electronic equipment for poor school districts, less developed nations etc. They do great work, but they don;t want much that is more than 2 yrs old.
I live in a country where consumption is the ultimate god. If stuff lasts and we keep stuff, we stop buying. It would be the end of life as we know it.
At least now I know it wasn’t just ME the Salvation Army was rude to!
Last year I loaded up the trunk, pulled up to the store, rang the bell at the drop off door, and the woman who came out saw what was on the top of the pile and immediately started criticizing what I had. When I said “forget it then” and shut the trunk she said huffily “Well, you don’t have to come in with THAT attitude!!!” I reported her and did get an apology from the office, but I won’t give Salvation Army anything else ever again and I won’t even go in their store to look at things.
A different local charity thrift store took my stuff and even thanked me for bringing it.
I guess some years ago Goodwill quit repairing furniture etc.
We’ve put some stuff out on the corner by my husband’s store and it usually disappears within a week. We don’t have to worry about stuff getting rained on in the summer from about July 10 to Labor Day since we usually don’t get any rain during that time anyway. And this year we’ve barely had any precip of any kind so it wouldn’t be a problem.
There’s a place in Washington state called 2 Good 2 Toss - http://www.2good2toss.com but you have to live in the state to post anything. It’s run by the Dept. of Ecology - maybe other states have similar outfits.
In Britan during the war, everything possible was re-cycled. Cloth, paper, bones, sucepans to make aircraft, iron railings to make shells. Any uneated food (unusual) was fed to a pig. Waste Not Want Not. etc. Maybe one reason who those who went through the War are nostalgic about it - it just brought out a better community spirit in people.
As far as finding homes for older PCs go, we’ve always found a poor family with kids who have no computer at all. We clean off the PC, load it up with educational games that we either have on-hand or get on the cheap, make sure it’s got Word or some such on it for homework, and my hubby sets it up for them. We try to find a used printer to go with it as well. It may or may not be internet capable, but most of the families we’ve given these to can’t afford even as much as NetZero anyway…what they are happy to have is something that is fun for their kids and that will teach them a few skills, and that will allow the parents to do such things as write cover letters and resumes. Agencies may not take them, but individuals are often very happy to get them.
Another place that’s often very happy to take older electronics is private schools. They don’t necessarily use them as computers…rather, they have the kids “dissect” them and put them back together (sometimes functional, sometimes not!) to help them learn how such things work.
Redwolf
That’s a nice thing to do Redwolf. Maybe next time I’ll do that instead of giving my parts away to geeks.
All this concern over wastage is very good but I think we’re forgetting about a growing waste problem. Cemetary plots!
I’ve figured it out. You can fit about 440 average bodies into a square mile (400 American due to greater average girth). There are about 57 million square miles of land so that comes out to roughly 25.2 billion bodies that can be buried. I think it’s high time to reconsider this whole “burial” thing. Would you want your grandchildren to play on a playground of the dead?
More and more people opt for cremation. There is a ton of open land in the U.S., though much of it isn’t located conveniently for cemetaries. In Europe they lease plots, and they get recycled. In China, they bury them standing up, though many of the noveau rich spend fortunes for large crypts and such. Finally, check your math. I get 52805280/100 = 278784, and that is with a generous 10x10 plot per person. I think it is more like 6x9 for a standard plot. Giving:
52805280/6/9 = 516266 per square mile. Probably quadruple that if they are standing up, ala China.
The average American probably uses up 100x or more of that amount of space for landfill during his/her lifetime, so while you have a point, I see it as a minor one.
- Bill
My husband and I opted long ago to be cremated. With housing and arable land at a premium these days, we both think it obscene to take up space with our bodies, preserved so it will take them forever to go back to the earth.
He jokes that, if I predecease him, he’s going to carry through on an idea I had a long time ago…i.e., to dump my ashes on Mt. St. Helens in retribution! (I was in Spokane in 1980). Actually, I’m not entirely sure it’s a joke, but what the heck…I’m not going to care one way or another at that point! I used to tell him I was going to work him into my compost heap, but since I no longer have a garden, maybe I’ll just sprinkle him under a redwood in Cowell’s State Park.
Redwolf
Believing in voluntary non-longevity, if I have any control over the time of my exit from this beautiful planet, I want to breathe my last breath in a remote location in the desert of Arizona. I would be content to let the coyotes and the smaller creatures have at it with my remains. Then my bones could bleach white and gradually disintegrate in the hot sun.
However, if I don’t have the control that I would like, my second choice is to have my ashes scattered anywhere, but preferably in a natural setting.
Not a direct answer to the question, but just a little info…
I believe that the clothing that is donated to Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc. is sold in order to make money for charitable causes, not because it is to be sold to poor people. In other words, these organizations value the clothing for the money it can bring in, not because they sell it cheap to poor people. Perhaps the value they get in selling it isn’t making up for the costs these days…I saw a TV program recently about what happens to a donated shirt. Eventually they wind up being sold in the middle of nowhere Africa or some such place. It’s a pretty big business worldwide. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with giving to Goodwill, as long as you know that the homeless aren’t necessarily wearing the used clothing.
At any rate, it may be a local thing, or related to the cost of transportation for pickup, etc.
Robin
Yep. My math was waaay off. Wouldn’t know I minored in math. Anyway I feel better. I was going to avoid going barefoot.
many of my relatives (including my father) donated their bodies to the local university. Anything “usable” is first taken - this includes skin, bone, etc. Then the remainder is used for research. No one that donates through this program is used as a “cadaver” in classes.
Approximately a year and a half after death, you are given a choice of receiving the remaining ashes, or there is a mass inturment area that was donated by the local cemetary. There is also a memorial service at that time, telling what some of the research conducted was (dad was in a group used extensively for laser eye surgery research).
Dad always said if you needed to plant something when he died, plant a tree.
Missy