Oh, the construction dumpsters I’m talking about are located in new subdivisions. When The Daughter moved into her house, new houses were “in progress” down the street.
Moving CREATES junk. You may have boxed it up, hauled to the new place, and opened it up to say, “Now why in Hell did I pack THAT?” Plus there a zillions of boxes and packing material.
You have to show true couth when using construction dumpsters. Go to the street where construction is just beginning, and there are few occupied houses. Go at night, on a holiday weekend.
I don’t think I’d be gutsy enough to dispose of old car parts, half-empty paint cans and a dead dog in a construction dumpster. That’s…tacky.
There’s rarely new construction near us, these are in someone’s driveway for a remodel. If I know the neighbor I ask. Our trash won’t take construction debris.
I once rolled a washing machine down to the curb and someone was taking it before I made it fully up the driveway. I had to tell him to wait for the dryer.
When we bought a new refrigerator, the delivery guys said they could take the old one off your hands for $50. I just laughed them off. Rolled it down to the curb and it disappeared within an hour. I watched that one with some amusement – a scrap metal guy with a full pickup drove by, stopped and you could just see the gears turning that he had no room in his truck but he wasn’t going to let this plum go. He balanced the edge of it on his bumper and used about a million bungie cables to “secure” it. Hopefully it didn’t land on anyone’s hood on the way to the scrapyard.
And you’re not only screwing them up by taking up their space. Landfills no longer just take everything mixed in together at the same price; a construction debris dumpster is supposed to only have construction debris in it, and mixing in other things can result in the whole load being rejected (as I found out when I asked the crew working on my place if I could add an old mattress to their dumpster.)
My wife uses a bunch of the Facebook buy/sell/trade/give groups, and they are much better than Craigslist. There is a socially-enforced set of rules (e.g., you must sell to the first person who agrees to pay asking price) and people who show up with 1/3 of the price get banned quickly.
Finally sold something. The kitchen microwave/storage unit for $20. The good news is, got someone to take away the very heavy TV stand the other day, and a guy just came to pick up two bookcases and when he was here I showed him my two kitchen island tables and he took those. Moving day just got a lot easier.
I will never sell anything on Craigslist again, but I may give away some stuff.
I used to do what others here have done when I had a house in RI on a busy street, put stuff on the curb and it was gone right away.
The east side of my house fronts up on an alley, and there are a lot of trash pickers that cruise by. When my first set of tenants left they didn’t take a dining table and four chairs. I hauled them out to the alley, and just as I was depositing the last chair a woman stopped and asked if she could take them. “Help yourself!” Other items have gone the same way.
That’s the other nice thing, access to scrappers. Anything metal, I don’t have to heave into the dumpster. I just put it nearby and let my scrapper know he can have it the next time he’s nearby. I don’t even have to take it apart. I gave him an broken (residential) dishwasher one day. He may have stripped out the plastic tub since he was there and we have a dumpster, but the rest of it he tossed into his truck and drove off with. I believe he sorts it all at home and watches prices to decide when to bring it in.
For years and years and years, he was taking all our cardboard bales too, which was great since the price plummeted from about $20 each to a few cents (and the dumpster people told us to stop throwing them in their bins).
I sold my own cars for over 30 years using various methods with no problems. The last time, I used Craigslist. I got three emails from people all claiming to be U.S. service people overseas who wanted to buy the car for their father. They were all from different email addresses but two of them were identical right down to the typos. They would send a service to pick the car up. No doubt they would send me a fake check then ask me to wire the money to the pickup service. I got another email from someone out of state who I think was a broker who lowballed me without even seeing the car. I got no contacts at all from a serious private buyer. (I got a phone call from another ad I placed in an automotive site, and that guy also lowballed me. I got a written offer from CarMax that was $1000 better than either of the lowballs. I ended up keeping the car and letting my son drive it.)
I would rather that a scammer has my email address than my phone number. If you publish your phone number, doesn’t that draw scammy calls, even unrelated to your ad?
Because scammers who are after your money on Craigslist are just not going to be convincing on the phone. I’ve never had anyone call me and try to run any of the scams noted above, whereas the few times I used email, I was inundated with them. As for scammy calls, that’s what number blocking is for.
I used to love Craigslist - back maybe 10 years ago. I’ve sold things hitch-free on Craigslist and I’ve even gotten some fairly good freelance editing jobs using this platform. I used it a lot between 2010 and 2013. After moving to a new city and having been off the site for a while, I found that by 2015, things had deteriorated significantly. Very scammy. Maybe it had always been that way and I just never noticed, but I hardly ever use it now for anything.
Gotta say, bought a car on Craigslist last year and it went great.
Buyer said so, too. He only had three people interested, I was the first to test drive it (which was smart, it was a quirky car… first hybrid ever, almost no acceleration). I brought cash, he took it and emailed a “Sorry” to the other buyers.
Though I suppose he could’ve had a couple Nigerian princes send him checks after I left…
But if I could’ve afforded it, I’d’ve been buying from a friend or a dealer. I was on Craigslist because I was being cheap…
…
Long story, but the punchline was my car got totaled, I was lucky to be alive, but less lucky when the ins. co. only gave me $2500 for it. Wife said “Ok, there’s your budget for a car.” She’s so supportive…
So I found a dozen cool cars on C’List, printed out the details, and went over them with my “car guy”. He vetoed half of them, told me what was bound to break on the others in the next year, and offered to check out my first place contestant. Said it’d need $500 of work right away, I took the car back to the seller along with 20 hundreds. He said “Okay, here’s the title.”
I donate unwanted clothes, electronics and appliances to Goodwill.
It’s not worth the hassle to sell on Craigslist.
I could use eBay but I hate packing items and always lose money on shipping.
I still remember the mess with my AC. I had a large unit in the wall. It cooled the open plan living room/dining room and kitchen. I’d estimate 30,000 btu. Got Central air. The wall unit worked fine. We were using it just before unplugging and removing it from the wall. It was sold a week later.
I sold it to a lady at work. My 220v outlet had been disconnected and the circuit used for the central air.
I had no way to show the unit running. Sure enough, they call and said it didn’t work. It came back with burned wiring. They must have jury rigged power to it. I didn’t say anything. Returned their $$. I had to haul that 70lb hunk of metal to the city dump. Needed help to load it in my van.
Lesson learned. Don’t sell old stuff. It’s not worth it.
There are burner number apps for smart phones that you can have a number for free temporarily. We use them when we have a property to rent then let the number go after we have found a renter.
When I used my real number I was getting calls a couple months after the rental had been delisted.
