[avalaunch]

It's surprisingly hard considering the low benefit derived. First you have to find or buy a suitable box, which might need to be taped up. Then you have to decide what stuff is actually useless. And if you want to get the most out of your potential tax deduction, you also need to itemize everything you're giving away. Then you have to find the local thrift store. I have no idea where mine is. Then you have to find the time to either walk or drive there. For me, that'd be at least a half hour round trip. With a full time job, a baby, and a rapidly shrinking social life (did I mention I have a baby?), it hardly seems worth it to trade my time for such a small gain.

[shva]

It's times like this that I forget how lucky I am to live downtown in a major city. Within 15 minutes walking distance from my house, I have at least 4 used book stores, 2 record stores 1 vintage/thrift store, and another 2 vintage clothing stores, all of which accept trade ins for cash or merchandise. If none of those places give me moneys for my useless crap, then I can just leave stuff on my sidewalk and it'll be gone in less than a day.

WHEREAS, if I lived in a suburban area, which I assume you probably do, finding anyplace this would be substantially harder to achieve, and ideas like the OPs/amazons, would actually be pretty awesome.

[avalaunch]

You're right that it's harder to get to places where I live but the OP's idea is still not great for me because I have so much extra space that it doesn't bother me having a bunch of extra crap. I can just toss it in the basement storage area and forget about it.

That being said, suburban problems are an often ignored market in the startup world, presumably because the major tech hubs are in large cities. How many startups focus on homeowners, for example? I would love a company that made taking care of my home effortless. It's so much more of an ongoing challenge than I had originally anticipated. Even if you decide to hire others to take care of the lawn, the repairs, and the general upkeep, it's a giant pain in the ass. You have to research, schedule, research again when the first handyman flakes on you, schedule, reschedule, reschedule again, negotiate, watch over them to make sure they do a good job, answer all their questions (especially true for landscaping), stand up for yourself when they try to rip you off, research some more and schedule someone else to finish what the first handyman started but failed to finish, negotiate again, watch over the new handyman, and hope you know enough to make sure they did what was promised.

I want a company that I pay a monthly fee to and everything is just taken care of. No scheduling. No negotiation. No questions interrupting my work day. They keep tally of what needs to be done and just do it. I'd pay 500/month for that - maybe more. That's assuming they take care of maintenance and repairs. If it's just maintenance, I'd pay 200/month.

[toasterlovin]

You are making excuses. You need to be making a plan and executing on it.

Find out where your local thrift shop is (30 seconds on Google), figure out what other errands need to get done in that part of town, put the shit you don't want near the front door or in the garage. Next time you run an errand near the thrift store, put your pile of crap in the car (loose, no need for a box). Drop it off while running your other errand.

Strart by telling yourself that you will do something and it will get done, but start by telling yourself that something cannot be done and it will not.

[avalaunch]

Agreed with all except that I'm making excuses. By that I mean it's great advice for most things in life that you want to do.

My point is that in this instance I just don't care. Not enough anyway. I could do exactly as you describe to minimize the cost but the value gain is so minimal that it doesn't warrant the effort. Simple cost/benefit analysis with the result being that the cost is too high (even if it's really low).

[toasterlovin]

On the contrary, I think removing extraneous crap from your life is one of the highest value activities that you can possibly engage in.

[avalaunch]

Yes, but I don't think that. I live in the midwest. I have a copious amount of space. Having extraneous crap doesn't bother me much at all as I hardly ever see it.

One of the highest value activities for me is spending time with my kid. It's a hard sell that getting ridding of extraneous crap is worth it if it costs me even 10 minutes I could have instead been spending with my kid.

Why do you value getting rid of crap so highly?