Recycle Room
Most larger buildings I've lived in have a central recycle/trash room, and most of them (including this one) quickly develop sort of an ad hoc "give an item, take an item" corner, in which accumulates, and decumulates, any number of random items which people feel bad throwing away, but can't be bothered to locate a new owner for on their own.
It's a pretty good arrangement, it seems, especially because I never cease to be amazed how quickly items get picked up. In my current building, almost nothing remains over 24 hours, and, in the cases I've been able to verify it, seldom even more than a couple of hours.
This even includes some of the stranger items.
As best as I can remember, here's the tally of everything I've ever seen down there in the last two years:
women's shoes a nice coffee table (retrieved by myself, actually, before the depositers even had a chance to put it on the floor) an IKEA shoe rack a collection of about 300 CDs — no discs, only jewel cases (I took some of these as well) a number of older model small one-piece home stereo systems baking sheets cardboard boxes a 17" CRT computer monitor Trivial Pursuit (Genus Edition – 1989 Canadian Printing) Wooden Chinese checkers set an iron and ironing board (not at the same time) some really atrocious decorative corinthian column things, made of plaster of paris a small shaving mirror a lattice-style towel rack a number of plush stuffed animals a sofa many, many, many different varieties of chairs
Of all of these, the one thing, appearing about a week ago, which just keeps hanging around for days and days and days?
A jigsaw puzzle.
Apparently used pillows and sheets don't bother people, nor chairs liable to fall apart and dump their passengers on the ground at any moment, but the one risk people simply refuse to take is investing all the time to work on someone else's jigsaw puzzle only to discover that the last piece is missing. Go figure.
It's a pretty good arrangement, it seems, especially because I never cease to be amazed how quickly items get picked up. In my current building, almost nothing remains over 24 hours, and, in the cases I've been able to verify it, seldom even more than a couple of hours.
This even includes some of the stranger items.
As best as I can remember, here's the tally of everything I've ever seen down there in the last two years:
Of all of these, the one thing, appearing about a week ago, which just keeps hanging around for days and days and days?
A jigsaw puzzle.
Apparently used pillows and sheets don't bother people, nor chairs liable to fall apart and dump their passengers on the ground at any moment, but the one risk people simply refuse to take is investing all the time to work on someone else's jigsaw puzzle only to discover that the last piece is missing. Go figure.