House Clearance - maybe real money saving?

nemo183

In the last six months I've had to pay people to take away some perfectly good furniture and personal effects from two houses - 95% of which was just smashed and burnt. I have to admit that probably half of this 95% was probably of no value, and no good to anyone.

However, the other half included basics such as sets of tables and chairs, bedroom wardrobes, dressers, garden furniture, etc etc. Some of this smashed up stuff was even antique.

Does anyone have any ideas of how these basics could be better put to use? Problem is, even if a charity shop is nearby, there's only so much they can take - and you have to take it there.

How about a forum posting "open days" where members can take away what they want (and can carry!) which would at least reduce the amount of landfill, and allow those of us getting rid of the stuff to feel slightly better about the whole thing?

Or maybe such a site already exists? If anyone knows of one, please reply!

Pat__3

Moving this to where you will get a better response.

mah_jong

What about local charities?

Salvation Army?

i have heard putting stuff out for collection disappears too!!!!

soolin

I had exactly the same problem nemo. I was having to empty a house after an elderly relative died.

House clearers wanted to take everything and charge me for the privelege but when I said I would keep the nearly new TV and video they said the deal was off.

Charity shops couldn't collect, and wouldn't take the virtually new three piece suite as the green triangle tag had been removed so they couldn't sell it on under fire regs (or something).

There is something called Freecycle that takes good second hand furniture and passes it on to people who need it, but I had an extra problem in that I live 100 miles away from the property and can only get there at weekends which was no good.

Eventually my husband and I hired a van and took quite a lot of the furniture to the dump where we hoped someone would take it away when they saw it was nearly new. Some of the furniture we bought back to our house where we have to climb over it to get in the door. We also kept the TVs although they are also surplus to our needs so am phoning rounds friends trying to give them away without success.

Soo

whitty999

Hi the best way is to free recycle it there is a site you put it on and people come and collect it all for free a really good site,Will save on filling land fills and does someelse a turn.

theGrinch

I second freecycle try on the msn groups for it.

SnowyOwl_2

Hi there.

Are these house clearances to do with your work or something? If so, then there seems to be a change of policy required regarding 2nd hand furniture. Are you permitted to sell any of it and then donate the money to charity? Or form a partnership with a charity which will collect things if they are given sufficient notice. There are various projects which rehouse homeless people, perhaps you could track something like that down, then work with them when there is a house clearance coming up. I can understand how a charity shop would be obliged to say no to lots of things all at once as they wouldn't have the space to store it.

I was going to mention https://www.freecycle.org but see I've been beaten to it already. It is divided up into groups by area but you can join more than one group so get maximum coverage as it sounds like you get lots of stuff to get rid of all at once. You can offer things out and say that charitable organisations will get priority (if you want to that is).