The peanuts went last
The last big mongo curbside deposit here was in November. Clean packing materials, both bubble-wrap and Styrofoam peanuts, did not go early this time around. We hadn’t accumulated much, since consumer activity has been on the low side here. We’re clearing stuff out because with SxSW on the horizon visitors will proliferate and they’ve already begun arriving. We need space!
Don’t ask why all these slick periodicals are here to be disposed of. Here’s the order in which they went, starting at about nine this morning: (1) four different kinds of TV, music, and telenovela magazines in Spanish went right away to two guys in a pickup with well-used wheelbarrows in the back; (2) Woman’s Day and Family Circle all in one go; (3) Paper and Interview to a guy on a bike wearing a beret and sunglasses; (4) clothes and shopping mags, all to women, in several installments, sometimes to women on foot walking dogs; (5) house-porn, otherwise known as shelter mags; (6) Harper’s but not Atlantic; (7) business and news pubs from the last two weeks; (8) New Mexico magazine; (9) some Granta issues and a couple of other paperbacks, all to the same guy; (10) Consumer Reports and PC Magazine, both to a guy on a nice little Triumph motorcycle; (11) Gourmet to a guy pushing a not-fancy stroller; (12) The Atlantic issues, to a guy in a new Dodge truck; (13) finally, the Rolling Stone, to a person not seen; and (14) New Yorker issues to a person not seen. Nobody wants Texas Monthly so far.
And that’s the only periodical left. They’d all been sorted and placed in low-sided containers so that, without being visible to the takers, we could see who took what from where my friend and I were hanging out. Some took the cartons and sacks. Some removed the giant “FREE” signs painted on streamers that came from an old roll of copy-machine paper painted with poster paint; others just took the signs along with the carton or sack to which they were stapled.
It’s a bit surprising that nobody just took everything all at once to see what it would bring at Half Price Books. I thought that would happen in November, the first time I tried this, but not then, either. Austinites still read, and they’re not greedy.
Thanks for the suggestion. We were cleaning up the garage (moving things from one stack to another) when I noticed the huge box of packing peanuts that have collected over years of mail-ordering. It’s definitely in the category of “too useful to throw away, but what are we going to do with it?”
Then I remembered this post, took a marker and wrote “FREE clean styo packing peanuts” on the box, and put it next to the front sidewalk. A couple of hours later, the box was gone. Yay!