I've been too proud to be a picker.
Not a stock picker or a nose picker, but a picker of stuff that I see on the side of the road on trash day or people just putting out for the gentlemen who cruise our neighborhood and countless others looking for things made out of metal that they can cash out for some paltry sum at a recycling facility.
Like most other middle class folks, I have put out many things that wore out their welcome or had some slight scratch or dent that rendered it done in our household.
This is not meant to offend, but all of the metal scrapping guys who cruise our neighborhood in old pickup trucks are of Mexican descent.
My thinking began to change just a few months ago as I created my own Money Mensch Twitter account and began following many financial bloggers. If you are one of them, I admit here to rarely reading through an entire post. So many of them are similar and, quite frankly, I am tiring of reading about how much money other people are making by blogging. I don't make diddly squat blogging. I'm not about to quit my day job.
One of the Twitter accounts that captured my interest is Flea Market Flipper., written by a guy who does as the moniker suggests. He picks up stuff at flea markets for a few bucks and then sells it at great profit, sometimes thousands higher than he paid for it. Just this week, I read about how he found a Harley Davidson sign for $250 and sold it for a whopping $7,500!
Me, I am not so likely to scour flea markets on weekends or any time. I spend a vast majority of my time working a municipal economic development job and most of my "free" time is spent doing family-related things. My "free" time beyond that is mostly spent writing these posts.
But what I have seen over the years is many nice things like furniture, toys, bikes and the like put out for the pickers to come grab or the garbage collectors if nobody picks them up. Sure, I have taken one or two small things if it was convenient to stop, nobody was looking and I could easily fit it into my car.
But I must have passed hundreds, if not thousands, of items with some value over the past seventeen years that I have lived in my neighborhood and the nearly thirteen years that I have worked for a nearby suburban community.
Before I opine about why I am trying to change this way of thinking, please allow me to explain why I have left thousands of dollars worth of items sitting for others to pick up.
First of all, I have walked around our neighborhood for a long time and many people know me. They might not know my name, but they generally know where I live and that I'm the guy who is always walking my sweet Baby around. If they put out an old dresser, I do not necessarily want to be known as the guy who picks it up and brings it home. Using old dressers as an example of something that I have passed up dozens of times, most of the ones that people put out are old plywood things with busted drawers. I am not exactly the handiest of fellows, so chances are that it would sit in disrepair in our garage taking up precious space for weeks, months or possibly years.
Better to let someone who will actually fix it up and use it pick it up.
I never considered that a little elbow grease and some paint might make it worth $40 or $50 to someone on Craigslist.
Second of all, there are some homes around here that have sustained some type of damage, whether it be a leaky roof or whatnot. I do not know if some cat peed on the item left out or died on it or perhaps peed on it and then died on it. I don't know if it sat in a leaky, moldy basement for ten years.
My thinking has always been something akin to if the people in that dumpy house no longer want that item or deem it worthy of their continued use, then why on God's green Earth would I want their rejects?
I did not consider sprucing up and selling their rejects. Even old ratty dressers could sell for a few bucks.
The third reason is the lack of convenience. This is one of the main things that has stopped me since first following Flea Market Flipper about six weeks ago.
What I mean by that is that, prior to leasing a new Subaru for my wife last November and taking over the old minivan, I drove two beater cars for quite a few years. One was a 2001 Nissan Maxima and the other was a 1998 Subaru Legacy. Because I am such an avid reader (hoarder) of books, both cars were typically stuffed with boxes of books.
I know...
If there were Book Hoarders Anonymous meetings, I would attend them.
Thus, if I happened to be driving to work in the morning and saw that someone put out their old La-Z-Boy in front of their house, I would not have anywhere to put it. I never have and most likely never will own a pickup truck and my wife would be using the minivan that is now mine.
Speaking of my better half, while I am striving to not be above picking up someone's old stuff or a flea market find that I could flip, my wife was, is and will always be against doing that. Thus, if I do pick something up, you had better bet that I be able to flip it for a nice profit, and fast.
More to the point of inconvenience, most of the roads that I take to work once I leave our neighborhood are very busy. Busy to the point of 50,000 or more vehicles per day. I am talking about busy commuter roads in the Chicago area during rush hour.
I have seen nice items put out by homeowners along these roads, but there is no way for me to stop in the middle of the traffic. True, I could pull onto a side road, but the third aspect of it being inconvenient is that I am rarely more than a few minutes early to work.
Stopping on a side street to get out and walk a block or two to pick up something that somebody left in front of their house during rush hour is just not something that I have ever done. I am not sure that I ever will, either. Don't forget that it snows about half the year around here too.
Speaking of snow, the last time that I saw decent furniture worth picking up in our neighborhood was just last week. The thing is, it was a nice looking chair with a beaten up looking dresser. Both had been left out overnight and had snow on them, and I cannot imagine that sitting out in the cold all night with snow on them helped their usability or resale value very much.
Picking up my son from college last Friday, I saw many nice items left out in the upscale town where he attends school. I had the van, the back was empty, and I could have fit a few things in. I was already contemplating this post and thinking about what I should do.
Unfortunately, I drove down a fairly busy street on the way to his campus just as someone was loading up two matching and completely intact mountain bikes. As a matter of fact, both of them were nicer than the one that I still use.
Man, would it have been a great post for me to tell you about how I got two mountain bikes and was either going to have them repaired so my wife and I could have matching bikes or list them each for $100 and make a quick $200.
But no. It frosted me a bit to see another picker of Mexican descent loading them up into the back of a pickup truck with other mangled metal things on their way to the recycling facility. I know that they need the money, but I am hoping that the guy who picked up the bikes will use them or give them to someone who will. I would hate to think that he would sell the metal from the two bikes to make an extra ten bucks.
Anyhow, I did pick up two things - one is an old Adirondack chair that I have set up near our outdoor fire pit and another is a decent painting of a sailboat that will hang on the wall of my son's apartment next school year.
I have a fifth reason why I have not picked things up.
As I have written a few times, I pay my family's bills, cover their insurance, buy food, put a roof over our heads, invest for the future, etc., by serving as a municipal economic development professional. I have done so since Y2K.
The community that employs me pays me fairly well and I would have been there for thirteen years as of next month. I am by no means Mr. Popularity, but I am fairly well-known in the town. I typically see a number of people who I know as I walk around the downtown area most days.
Although it sounds snobbish to write, it could be construed as unbecoming for me to pull up in my personal vehicle, dressed business casual, in front of a house in the town where I work to pick up something that a resident is discarding.
Not that many people know of my Jewish heritage, but I cannot imagine it enhancing my image if it became known that one of the only Jews in town who also happens to earn a living by working with businesses and developers in this upper middle class community picks up discarded furniture or whatever else people have left out. It would be that much worse if it was reported back to Village Hall.
So even though I have happened to be walking through some upper class neighborhoods right as someone throws out last year's couch because it is so out of style this year, yet it is better than the couch in my living room, I should not circle back to pick it up. Plus, I cannot exactly lift up a decent-sized couch by myself.
Again, I let someone else grab it later or the garbage collectors haul it away to rot away in a landfill forever.
I find it amazing that someone would choose to put a perfectly good couch or chair by the curb, but who am I to judge?
I think about using it or making $50 bucks on it, while the owner probably makes half a million or more per year and thinks nothing of upgrading his or her furniture.
The truth is, I do not know the reason or reasons why people put that kind of stuff out for others to pick up. When it is a home close to ours, sometimes I know. For instance, during the Recession, several families were evicted and sometimes I would see all their stuff out there.
Needing money or not, I have a moral problem with picking up some kid's dresser or toys after their family has been evicted. Other people may do it, but I will not.
The homes in our neighborhood, including ours, were built from 1960 to about 1964. There are a very few original owners left, including our next door neighbor.
Another thing that I have seen since we moved here ten days before 9/11 is an original owner passing away, then their more upwardly mobile or evenly mobile or, in some cases, downwardly mobile offspring put all their stuff out to the curb. Most often in a dumpster.
Now, I am not in the market for a 1960s or 1970s old, funky grandma chair, but I have seen many of these put out to the curb. In one case, one of our neighbors who purchased the house two years ago from her late mother's estate put out all of the vintage furniture from the home out on the curb. She even came and offered us the stuff and there was some pretty nice furniture.
My better half shot down taking any of it, but neither of us was contemplating reselling it. We just knew that we did not want it or have room for an extra dining room table.
Hypothetical question: wouldn't it be kind of cheesy to sell off furniture that your neighbor gave to you?
It would sure be awkward the next time she came into our house, as she does most holiday seasons, and asked where the item was. I'm not sure that she would appreciate me handing her a twenty for the beloved chair that she grew up sitting in.
So, no, we passed on that stuff just as I have passed up hundreds or even thousands of items left out, discarded and thrown away by others.
Even as I passed up on the nice stuff covered in snow last week, I thought to myself that it felt just like driving past fifty bucks left on the side of the road. And you know I would not do that. Anyone would be stupid not to stop and pick up fifty bucks. So why not pick up fifty bucks worth of stuff?
Well, I conclude this with a simple sentiment.
The next time that I have an opportunity to pick something up of value, whether it be left out in my own neighborhood, the town where I work or where my son goes to school, I will do what I can to pick it up. I will park on a side street if need be, circle back around or whatever. If it is too conspicuous, I will probably pass it up like I always have.
But as of now, I am too proud to pick no more.
Not a stock picker or a nose picker, but a picker of stuff that I see on the side of the road on trash day or people just putting out for the gentlemen who cruise our neighborhood and countless others looking for things made out of metal that they can cash out for some paltry sum at a recycling facility.
Like most other middle class folks, I have put out many things that wore out their welcome or had some slight scratch or dent that rendered it done in our household.
This is not meant to offend, but all of the metal scrapping guys who cruise our neighborhood in old pickup trucks are of Mexican descent.
My thinking began to change just a few months ago as I created my own Money Mensch Twitter account and began following many financial bloggers. If you are one of them, I admit here to rarely reading through an entire post. So many of them are similar and, quite frankly, I am tiring of reading about how much money other people are making by blogging. I don't make diddly squat blogging. I'm not about to quit my day job.
Me, I am not so likely to scour flea markets on weekends or any time. I spend a vast majority of my time working a municipal economic development job and most of my "free" time is spent doing family-related things. My "free" time beyond that is mostly spent writing these posts.
But what I have seen over the years is many nice things like furniture, toys, bikes and the like put out for the pickers to come grab or the garbage collectors if nobody picks them up. Sure, I have taken one or two small things if it was convenient to stop, nobody was looking and I could easily fit it into my car.
But I must have passed hundreds, if not thousands, of items with some value over the past seventeen years that I have lived in my neighborhood and the nearly thirteen years that I have worked for a nearby suburban community.
Before I opine about why I am trying to change this way of thinking, please allow me to explain why I have left thousands of dollars worth of items sitting for others to pick up.
First of all, I have walked around our neighborhood for a long time and many people know me. They might not know my name, but they generally know where I live and that I'm the guy who is always walking my sweet Baby around. If they put out an old dresser, I do not necessarily want to be known as the guy who picks it up and brings it home. Using old dressers as an example of something that I have passed up dozens of times, most of the ones that people put out are old plywood things with busted drawers. I am not exactly the handiest of fellows, so chances are that it would sit in disrepair in our garage taking up precious space for weeks, months or possibly years.
 |
| Someone could probably patch these up and flip them. |
I never considered that a little elbow grease and some paint might make it worth $40 or $50 to someone on Craigslist.
Second of all, there are some homes around here that have sustained some type of damage, whether it be a leaky roof or whatnot. I do not know if some cat peed on the item left out or died on it or perhaps peed on it and then died on it. I don't know if it sat in a leaky, moldy basement for ten years.
My thinking has always been something akin to if the people in that dumpy house no longer want that item or deem it worthy of their continued use, then why on God's green Earth would I want their rejects?
I did not consider sprucing up and selling their rejects. Even old ratty dressers could sell for a few bucks.
The third reason is the lack of convenience. This is one of the main things that has stopped me since first following Flea Market Flipper about six weeks ago.
What I mean by that is that, prior to leasing a new Subaru for my wife last November and taking over the old minivan, I drove two beater cars for quite a few years. One was a 2001 Nissan Maxima and the other was a 1998 Subaru Legacy. Because I am such an avid reader (hoarder) of books, both cars were typically stuffed with boxes of books.
I know...
If there were Book Hoarders Anonymous meetings, I would attend them.
Thus, if I happened to be driving to work in the morning and saw that someone put out their old La-Z-Boy in front of their house, I would not have anywhere to put it. I never have and most likely never will own a pickup truck and my wife would be using the minivan that is now mine.
Speaking of my better half, while I am striving to not be above picking up someone's old stuff or a flea market find that I could flip, my wife was, is and will always be against doing that. Thus, if I do pick something up, you had better bet that I be able to flip it for a nice profit, and fast.
More to the point of inconvenience, most of the roads that I take to work once I leave our neighborhood are very busy. Busy to the point of 50,000 or more vehicles per day. I am talking about busy commuter roads in the Chicago area during rush hour.
I have seen nice items put out by homeowners along these roads, but there is no way for me to stop in the middle of the traffic. True, I could pull onto a side road, but the third aspect of it being inconvenient is that I am rarely more than a few minutes early to work.
Stopping on a side street to get out and walk a block or two to pick up something that somebody left in front of their house during rush hour is just not something that I have ever done. I am not sure that I ever will, either. Don't forget that it snows about half the year around here too.
Speaking of snow, the last time that I saw decent furniture worth picking up in our neighborhood was just last week. The thing is, it was a nice looking chair with a beaten up looking dresser. Both had been left out overnight and had snow on them, and I cannot imagine that sitting out in the cold all night with snow on them helped their usability or resale value very much.
Picking up my son from college last Friday, I saw many nice items left out in the upscale town where he attends school. I had the van, the back was empty, and I could have fit a few things in. I was already contemplating this post and thinking about what I should do.
Unfortunately, I drove down a fairly busy street on the way to his campus just as someone was loading up two matching and completely intact mountain bikes. As a matter of fact, both of them were nicer than the one that I still use.
Man, would it have been a great post for me to tell you about how I got two mountain bikes and was either going to have them repaired so my wife and I could have matching bikes or list them each for $100 and make a quick $200.
But no. It frosted me a bit to see another picker of Mexican descent loading them up into the back of a pickup truck with other mangled metal things on their way to the recycling facility. I know that they need the money, but I am hoping that the guy who picked up the bikes will use them or give them to someone who will. I would hate to think that he would sell the metal from the two bikes to make an extra ten bucks.
Anyhow, I did pick up two things - one is an old Adirondack chair that I have set up near our outdoor fire pit and another is a decent painting of a sailboat that will hang on the wall of my son's apartment next school year.
As I have written a few times, I pay my family's bills, cover their insurance, buy food, put a roof over our heads, invest for the future, etc., by serving as a municipal economic development professional. I have done so since Y2K.
The community that employs me pays me fairly well and I would have been there for thirteen years as of next month. I am by no means Mr. Popularity, but I am fairly well-known in the town. I typically see a number of people who I know as I walk around the downtown area most days.
Although it sounds snobbish to write, it could be construed as unbecoming for me to pull up in my personal vehicle, dressed business casual, in front of a house in the town where I work to pick up something that a resident is discarding.
Not that many people know of my Jewish heritage, but I cannot imagine it enhancing my image if it became known that one of the only Jews in town who also happens to earn a living by working with businesses and developers in this upper middle class community picks up discarded furniture or whatever else people have left out. It would be that much worse if it was reported back to Village Hall.
So even though I have happened to be walking through some upper class neighborhoods right as someone throws out last year's couch because it is so out of style this year, yet it is better than the couch in my living room, I should not circle back to pick it up. Plus, I cannot exactly lift up a decent-sized couch by myself.
Again, I let someone else grab it later or the garbage collectors haul it away to rot away in a landfill forever.
I find it amazing that someone would choose to put a perfectly good couch or chair by the curb, but who am I to judge?
I think about using it or making $50 bucks on it, while the owner probably makes half a million or more per year and thinks nothing of upgrading his or her furniture.
The truth is, I do not know the reason or reasons why people put that kind of stuff out for others to pick up. When it is a home close to ours, sometimes I know. For instance, during the Recession, several families were evicted and sometimes I would see all their stuff out there.
Needing money or not, I have a moral problem with picking up some kid's dresser or toys after their family has been evicted. Other people may do it, but I will not.
The homes in our neighborhood, including ours, were built from 1960 to about 1964. There are a very few original owners left, including our next door neighbor.
Another thing that I have seen since we moved here ten days before 9/11 is an original owner passing away, then their more upwardly mobile or evenly mobile or, in some cases, downwardly mobile offspring put all their stuff out to the curb. Most often in a dumpster.
My better half shot down taking any of it, but neither of us was contemplating reselling it. We just knew that we did not want it or have room for an extra dining room table.
Hypothetical question: wouldn't it be kind of cheesy to sell off furniture that your neighbor gave to you?
It would sure be awkward the next time she came into our house, as she does most holiday seasons, and asked where the item was. I'm not sure that she would appreciate me handing her a twenty for the beloved chair that she grew up sitting in.
So, no, we passed on that stuff just as I have passed up hundreds or even thousands of items left out, discarded and thrown away by others.
Even as I passed up on the nice stuff covered in snow last week, I thought to myself that it felt just like driving past fifty bucks left on the side of the road. And you know I would not do that. Anyone would be stupid not to stop and pick up fifty bucks. So why not pick up fifty bucks worth of stuff?
Well, I conclude this with a simple sentiment.
The next time that I have an opportunity to pick something up of value, whether it be left out in my own neighborhood, the town where I work or where my son goes to school, I will do what I can to pick it up. I will park on a side street if need be, circle back around or whatever. If it is too conspicuous, I will probably pass it up like I always have.
But as of now, I am too proud to pick no more.
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