But it’s a “solution” to a nonexistent problem. The vast majority of stuff people own sits unused for decades but gets moved around to whatever home you’re living in out of irrational loss aversion.

This is human, and fine. But I’m 100% certain this author is grossly overestimating the value of the junk they believe they are “saving” and how much of it they will actually use. This is the rationalizing of a budding hoarder.

The time pressure does these kids a huge service by forcing them to clear out stuff that doesn’t actually matter so they don’t feel the need to buy a 4,000 sq ft McMansion to store their college bean bag chair and every other piece of junk they’ve ever owned.

Ultimately, the authors children will run across these “salvaged goods” in a decades-untouched pile in her basement upon her death in about 66 years.

The problem here is that a good amount of perfectly serviceable items went into the trash instead of being donated. That is just straight up wasteful.

What's more wasteful, throwing away mass produced items that still have 50% of their life left that you won't actually use (but are rationalizing that you will because 'free')?

Or heating a 4,000 sq foot home for 60 years to store said items in unused piles and then having your children eventually throw those items away anyways when you die?

Realistically it's going to be 1 of those 2 scenarios.

This is the rationalization that I've used successfully before.

Every item takes space, and space costs money. Space often costs quite a bit of money. If I'm paying $2000/m for a 750sqft apartment (not unreasonable for many metros), then every square foot costs me ~$3/month minimum (often quite a bit more because I also have to heat, clean, and organize it as well).

How many months of storage does it take to mean you're literally losing money by keeping an item?

For old shoes? Not that many... if you haven't worn a pair of shoes in a few years, you've likely spent more than $100 storing it.

For bad furniture? Not that many... it takes a lot of space. That crappy couch no one wants to sit on anymore can be costing you almost $100/month.

For that old bag you overpaid on and don't even like that much? Now you're just lighting more money on fire for every month you hang onto it.

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Mentally shifting the equation to a more realistic "opportunity cost" model for items is healthy. Posts like the top level article are, respectfully, a chock of bullshit. Those kids might have messed up when they originally overpaid for a luxury item, but I don't believe for a heartbeat they're messing up when they choose to let it go.

Go work in a place that takes donations, and you'll quickly see they do exactly the same calculus. Goodwill might take your whole bag of donations, but they will absolutely throw 70%+ of it away right off the bat.

They can't afford to try to reuse your crappy stuff for months, quietly losing money storing it.

The nicer consignment shops won't even pretend - they'll just flat out refuse to accept most of your junk. It's not even worth sorting through.

> Mentally shifting the equation to a more realistic "opportunity cost" model for items is healthy.

There is usually no opportunity cost though. Those shoes you keep around have no margin cost for the apartment until you need a bigger place.

There is absolutely an opportunity cost for all of the stuff you own. I won't publish my entire thinking on this, but after seeing my parents collect, hoard and store things for years and years, I place a high value on not having something (I tell myself that I am letting the store hold it for me.)

I still have too much stuff and its a fraction of what my parents had.

(Perhaps this is more of an American thing?)

Go volunteer at an organization that will accept this stuff as donations.

I think you're going to be in for a shock... 2/3rds of the donations go right in the trash (they will optimistically call it salvage/recycling).

Source?

My experiences volunteering at goodwill and habit for humanity ReStore.

A bag will come in full of items. A small subset of that bag will be pulled out to go on shelves. The majority of the bag will be sent to "salvage" (trash/recycling).

Some folks have a curated selection of items they bring in that mostly get accepted, but usually the folks doing that just take it to a real consignment shop, or sell it on something like facebook marketplace.

Generally - a large portion of the donations are exactly this situation: used items in a big trashbag that come in after a move (or eviction [or death]).

They go in the trash. Where the owner probably should have put them a while back. I also don't like how much churn exists in our modern consumption economy - but it's not doing favors to pretend it doesn't exist. Much of our "stuff" is low cost, semi-consumable items that will end up trashed - by design. I don't like it either, but saying "Donate it" is like pretending recycling is going to solve plastic pollution.

Gotcha. I think I had a different situation in mind where the things are already pre-selected. If there's bags of garbage or stuff nobody needs, sure those would have to be disposed of. Totally depends on what the input is.

Sure, and that's fair and I'm not saying you shouldn't donate like that (frankly - that about the only way you should donate if you want to actually be helpful).

I think the reality is that online marketplaces basically fill that gap, though.

Most folks who have items that they know aren't trash try to sell them themselves online these days (or best case - use things like "BuyNothing" groups).

But if you can't move it on facebook marketplace, the sad reality is that goodwill and the like are also probably going to put it in the trash if you donate it to them.

Even places like homeless shelters are very picky (exclusively "new" or "gently used" donations of specific items).

There's just a lot of work in "matching" used items to people who want/need those items, and most times the value of the item is lower than the value of that work (even when that work is heavily discounted by volunteers).

I have a bunch of stuff that someone might want (or probably more realistically think they want) but there is a very real limit to how much effort and time I'm going to put into connecting to that someone.

What really bothers me with the article---something I think I share with top-level commenter dpkga---is throwing away perfectly fine articles of clothing (i.e., "tennis shoes"). Not to mention, expensive. These, presumably wouldn't cost a fortune to transport even overseas. I get it that maybe the student had to make a choice between, say, bulky books/notebooks/school work which may come in handy for the future but that's where the "expensive" part comes in; why even buy something expensive if there was any chance you'd discard it before its service life is up? (Other commenters have provided answers elsewhere that I consider plausible.)

The furniture (i.e., "bean bag chair") I can totally understand why they'd discard it. The only thing that bothers me then is, will they buy a similar item for next year? Because if they will, then this stuff doesn't "doesn't matter" and therefore the problem actually exists, if only because it feeds into the mindless consumer attitude which leads to over production of goods that end up in landfills if not in someone else's hoard pile.

But then, having a dorm "thrift store" is not a bad solution. Let some curated amount of stuff stay behind and be available to other students. Some stuff needs to be just trashed by responsible adults but otherwise, a university or dorm can find some space.

It just seems that some such organization never get to this.

Better yet, offer to store a reasonable amount of students' belongings over the summer. My college offered this my first couple years but stopped by the time I graduated in 2010.

Yes, we had summer storage undergrad for dorms. Still put too much energy and effort into moving stuff around. In a more digitized world, I like to think there would be less paper etc. and I maybe wouldn't even have a big stereo system.

They dont want a bunch of students hanging around with no school and extra time on their hands. Agree its way to short, as someone that had to deal with it, but also understand the trade off they were making at the time.