Chicagoians - We have to move. Want free stuff? (Piano? Clothes? Magazines?)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We have to move, and not by choice. You can read me bitching about it in this pathetic rant.

We haven’t found a place yet, but no matter where we go, it’s going to be a smaller place. We have Stuff (we’re packrats, I must admit) and it’s going to either go in the trash or be destroyed when the building is demolished. If anyone wants any of it, now is the time to speak up.

There’s only one requirement:

YOU MUST COME GET IT (sometime in the next 2 weeks).

We don’t have a car and don’t have time to be traipsing all over the place anyway.

I promise that we are not

a) serial killers just luring people to our place (not that we don’t mind leaving a mess, but I have an aversion to blood.)

b) after money. There are some things we could sell, but this being a non-commercial message board, I’m not going to give a list. We just want to give away things that it would be a shame to see trashed.

I promise that we are

a) fully armed and willing to protect ourselves if YOU are a serial killer (though I don’t suppose serial killers bother to read The Straight Dope)

b) poor and will not buy anything if you come here to sell us something.

c) willing to give our full names, telephone number and address via e-mail.

Available:

  1. Piano

This is an smallish upright. It belonged to the woman who owned the building when we moved in. She sold the building and moved back to the Phillipines several years ago and gave it to us. I have short stubby fingers, and quit my piano lessons in frustration. It’s sat there holding up photo frames and collecting dust ever since. It’s old, and has nicks and dents, but we had it tuned a few years ago and the person who tuned it didn’t say anything about it being a piece of shit. He didn’t say anything about it being great either. It will do for kids who are just learning, or for an adult who just want to tinker. The way, uh, I thought I was going to do. It really would be a shame to see it pulverized if someone can use it. A piano bench and sheet music is included.

FULL DISCLOSURE: We live on the 3rd floor of a 3 flat.
2) Clothes

I have bags and bags (and bags!) of clean clothes that aren’t really worth selling or giving to Goodwill. They’re torn or have small stains. What they would be GREAT for is kid’s crafts projects and/or quilting. Cut out the small stain and you have a lot of fabric left over. I’ve been trying to get rid of these for years (I even posted on the Dope about them before), but no takers. Doesn’t anybody quilt anymore??

FULL DISCLOSURE: You want one? No, I’m sorry, you have to take them all.
3) Magazines

I’ll have to go through and see what all I have, but I know there are several years worth of Time and Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Spin, (my guy Chris just said he has a bunch of Spy magazines, but he may want to sell those on ebay), People, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair and I don’t know what else. Our back room is filled with hundreds of magazines. There’s nothing really old. I only started subscribing to many of these in the 90’s. They’d also be good for craft projects.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I won’t look for a specific issue of anything. If you’re hoping to find that one specific issue of whatever, you’re going to have to take them all, and look through them yourself.
4) Videotapes

I also have to go through these and see what we want to keep and what to give away. These are not pre-recorded. They’re shows I taped off the air, and practically everything is at SLP (6-hr) speed. They range from tapes popped in in the days following Diana’s death, to old episodes of ER and Chicago Hope, to old Novas, to dozens and dozens of skating tapes and Olympic tapes. Many of these are not marked, and I have no idea what exactly is on them. These will be hardest to give up, because I just know there’s things on them I’d love to keep. I’d love to keep everything, but besides being an awful packrat, I’m also really terrible at keeping up with things I record. I just pop a tape in and let it run. Everytime I try to keep up, I end up falling behind and then getting involved in another project, and forgetting about them.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m not going to look for something in particular. If you want one, you have to agree to take a bunch.
There’s more, such as bags of kichen & bathroom stuff, much of it bought at dollar stores over the years, until we could get something better (might be good for a homeless shelter or battered women’s home). Too good to throw away, not interested in keeping. We just don’t have the time or energy to bother with a garage sale.

  1. If you’re an ardent anti-$cientologist, we have a set (I think there’s 14) of L. Ron Hubbard “management” books and some tapes. I’ve never been a $cientologist, and in fact have been an anti-$cientologist since the early 1970’s, but I got them years ago from a guy who was in our situation. He was going to move and throw them in the trash. I thought it would be a kick to look through them, but the man disgusts me so much that I’ve barely touched them. If an anti-$cientologist wants them for anything involving anti-$cientology, you’re welcome to them for free. You must convince me you’re an anti-$cientologist. If a $cientologist wants them, I’ll be willing to sell them for $150 per book. Note: I will write “Hubbard is a lying asshat bastard, wake up!!” on the cover of each volume, in black Sharpie (the books are green).
    So, any takers?

My e-mail is xenussister@yahoo.com

Vickie

2

I should have noted that we’re in the Albany Park area of Chicago, near Kedzie and Lawrence, end of the Brown Line.

3

Well, I got rid of the piano (I hope, anyway. They’re supposed to come pick it up on Sunday), but I have all these bags of clothes. They’d be so PERFECT for crafts projects, such as people just learning how to quilt where they wouldn’t want to use more expensive fabric. They’re clean!

Man, I’ve tried community centers, churches, several different newsgroups, and not a peep.

All this stuff will go in the trash, and it’s a real shame. :frowning:

4

Call Goodwill or Salvation Army for a pickup. If the clothes aren’t usable as clothes, they still can sell the fabric to companies that take it and use it for all kinds of other stuff, and make money to support their programs. And they’ll pick it up from you. :smiley:

5

My friend bristlesage and I are moving to Chicago in a couple weeks. We have almost no furniture. I don’t suppose you have any extra couches or tables you’re hankering to get rid of?

6

Thanks Mama Tiger, I’ll be making some phone calls tomorrow.

Sorry to keep you hanging, I haven’t checked the web in days. We still haven’t found a place, and when we do, the size of it will determine what furniture we can take with us.

I know I can’t help you with a couch and tables. We have a full couch and a matching loveseat we bought just 5 years ago when we first moved in here. We’ll keep those until they fall apart. We also bought, then, a brand new dining room table and a new kitchen table. We’re specifically asking about dining room size and eat-in kitchens before we go check out places.

We have some extra furniture, some of which was here when we moved in, that you could have if you wanted, but you’d have to come get them, since we don’t even have a car, let alone a truck.

We have, and you can have :

  1. an extra coffee table (servicable wood, your standard coffee table)
  2. a side (of the couch) table with a glass top (pretty nice looking)
  3. a 6-drawer dresser

That dresser has a matching 4-drawer bureau (sp) but I like to keep stuff like extra kitchen towels, and odds and ends like candles and such in it. If we don’t have room for it, you could have it too.

  1. we have 2 or 3 extra file cabinets, if you’re interested.
  2. a computer desk with overhead shelves. (this was one of those cheapie put-together yourself jobbies that we replaced with office desks. The moving company doesn’t want to deal with it, since it could fall apart during a move. If it survives a move, it’d do alright for you until you get something better.
  3. another computer desk, small
  4. yet another computer desk, that could be used as a microwave or TV stand

That’s all I can think of right now. Will you know someone with a truck when you move here?

(Welcome to Chicago, btw! We love it here, and though this move has had us seriously considering moving back to Kansas City, where the rents are much much cheaper, we can’t bear the thought of leaving.)

Eq

7

I think the reason know one is coming to take that junk off your hands is because it’s junk. Sounds to me like it all (save the piano…no pun intended) belongs in the dumpster. Old People magazines? Puhlease. Do you understand what dumpsters are for?

Sorry, I must sound snarky. But really! Stained, ripped clothing? I better get out of this thread before it starts sounding like a pit thread.

8

My, you’re elite, aren’t you?

When I was a kid, I belonged to a church group during the summer. We made crafts, and tried our hand at decopauge and quilting. We had real trouble finding enough material for all of the kids to use and could have used extra fabric and magazines. You take a nice blouse with a mustard stain the size of a dime. Cut out that dime-sized mustard stain, and there’s a LOT of fabric left over for quilt squares. You take a breezy summer skirt that got caught on something and ripped off the seam. It can’t be repaired, but there’s a lot of fabric there that can be used for quilt squares. Do you understand what quilting is?

(My class ended up abandoning those projects for lack of material and finally made these small stupid-looking picture frames out of popsickle sticks.)

I know what’s worth throwing away and what can be used for kid’s crafts and quilting. I said they weren’t worth selling or giving away to be used as clothing. You obviously went to a school/camp/babysitter/whatever that had money to buy crafts materials brand new.

People throw away things all the time that can be used for other things, and they don’t even THINK to ask around if they’re wanted. I’m trying to do something nice for someone. That someone hasn’t found me yet, unfortunately. Excuse me for trying to be a little bit resonsible before I add to our landfill situation.

I said it in my OP: KID’S CRAFTS AND QUILTING. Nothing more, nothing less.

9

I also mentioned that the clothes are clean (save for whatever stain I’ve tried and tried and can’t get out.) They’re washed and folded. I didn’t just dig in my dirty laundry, pull things out and stuff them into a bag.