Hopefully the filter works. @Scott- There are costs associated with possession of material goods, one that is not often considered is the cost to unload it. As you have found, it's not easy to unload goods even with an abundance of time. People have different ideas of the value (seller thinks higher than buyer) and then the time component for the seller (who often doesn't have the same time abundance). Most things are easier to be rid of for no cost for most people, rather than dealing with listing it and maybe making $30. In the case of a free piano, how many people want to go through the hassle of getting a trailer and moving the heavy thing out of someone's house and into another? I bought my piano for $100, similar to the one that was just listed for free. The owners said it had been up for months and they were thinking nobody was going to buy it. In the case of the animals, the cows were from someone's grandmother who died and he needed them gone to finish taking care of the estate and one set of chickens were offered by friends who were moving who didn't have time to kill and process them before they left.
We don't have garbage service here, everyone takes their trash to one of a few waste transfer stations around town. There are a few dozen dumpsters and a big covered area where people can dump furniture, appliances, clothes etc. There are all kinds of people, all the time, hanging around scrounging the waste for things to use. There aren't many homeless people here but the ones that are hang out around these spots. I know some people who have outfitted their entire house with things from these transfer stations.
Last year when we had pigs we had heard that the food bank offers food that is expired or had gone expired to farmers/people with animals for food. The building is one of the largest in town, a massive warehouse. They receive donations from every single grocer/supermarket in town, most restaurants and some from individual households. They have so much excess, that multiple times a week farmers show up with 16 ft trailers that they fill with boxes full of food. We got plenty of food from them as well, and often the food was perfectly fine for humans. I believe I have some of this documented in my journal above. What isn't taken by people for animals ends up in the garbage.
All of that to say, there is a tremendous amount of waste in this country. The above has led me to the belief that "giving things away" is often a way for people to feel virtuous about their waste, when in reality most of it is likely to end up in the same place. The landfill.
