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Purging…

The last few weekends, we’ve been purging some of the stuff that’s laying around the house. It all started when we put a bookcase and a some desk parts down in our carport area for storage. You could barely see them, just up against the wall, but apparently the association wanted all the carports cleared out, so they stapled a note to ours letting us know that we needed to either remove the offending furniture or they’d remove it for us at a charge.

Whatever.

So, I loaded the stuff up in the car, along with two VCR’s, one DVD player and a 6-CD changer and headed over to Goodwill to drop off what I thought would be a hefty bounty for them.

I arrive, and tell the greasy looking guy standing at the Goodwill drop off that I’ve got a bookcase, a desk and some video equipment. He responds that they don’t take desks, but will take the bookcase. and the video stuff. Ugh. Soooo, I start pulling out the video stuff and hand it to him and tell him that they still work and are in great shape… as he slams them down into the back of the truck. And so I say “Well, they DID work”. He gives me a receipt and I put down that it’s a $250 deduction on my taxes.

We held onto the bookcase and desk and decided to hit the consignment shop really quickly to see if they’d accept them. To our surprise they were more than happy to take them. We unloaded the desk and bookcase, helped put them back together and went on our way. Each would be sold for about $100 and the consignment shop would take half, leaving us with $100 if they both sold. Not bad for something we were going to donate.

With that gone, I decided to finally get rid of some old computer equipment that had pretty much been following me from place to place for the last four years. An old Power Computing Mac clone (anyone remember those?) and an old Laserwriter Pro. The computer still worked and booted up, albeit s-l-o-w-l-y and the printer was having issues printing. Probably needed a new drum or something. The printer weighed about 600 pounds and just took up too much desk space, so getting rid of it was in my best interest. The computer was slow and wouldn’t load OSX, so it too had run it’s life course, in the world of computing.

Anyhow, I loaded those up into the back of the car and headed to this computer recycling center. Now, up to this point, everything I’d read said that in order to dispose of computer equipment you needed to pay some place to dispose of it properly. Thus, holding onto the stuff for four years. Maybe I was hoping it would just disintegrate or something. Anyhow, this place is right next to Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale and accepts all kinds of computer equipment for FREE. Those are the magic words. I handed the printer and computer to the folks at the Computer Recycling Center and got a receipt for $250 worth of goods. Booyah!

Now this place is a geeks dream come true. All kinds of old computer systems and modems and computer cords and monitors and everything for really cheap. I’m talking about a monitor for $25. They work, although they don’t all look great cosmetically. Imagine the monitor you use at work for sale. Greasy fingerprints and torn off stickers. But they work, if anyone wants an old monitor they have them. They also have software in closed boxes and stuff. One guy grabbed a whole box of ink cartridges, like a CASE of them. Guess he owned that kind of printer. I think most of the stuff there comes from companies looking to get rid of their old stock, even the stuff they’ve never used.

Anyhow, I think after the holidays, we’ll be bringing our coffee table and end table to the consignment shop and then near the summer they’ll be getting our sofa and side chair. Sometimes you just look around and start thinking, how’d we end up with so much stuff. Ugh.

Tags: cleaning, consignment, recycling, computers

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