On the value of used stuff
February 27th, 2008 | by Paul |I once bought a used book at Myopic in Chicago. Don’t ask me what book it was - too nerdy to admit.
Inside the book was a Post-It Note (brand name ownership example #1) with a phone number for a man named Noel who lived in England.
How cool is that? You won’t get that at a Borders.
The point of that anecdote is that used stuff is cool. It’s got history and a little bit of class and it makes you wonder. Who had this before? Where has it been?
Granted, maybe I’m a little more romantic than most, but don’t you ever wonder what a wild journey your toaster over had before you? No? Just me? Well, crap.
I don’t really have the time or energy to go into more convincing reasons, but check out Freecycle or the free section of Craigslist next time you need something. The stuff is already out there and you can get it without increasing your impact on the earth. Without you, that stuff would probably go into a Dumpster (brand name ownership example #2) and you would buy a completely separate table or whatever. And that would go into a Dumpster once you’re done with it.
Hit the used book stores, thrift shops, resale establishments and so on. It’s cheap, helps keep stuff out of garbage bin recepticles (got tired of saying “Dumpster”) and you’ll get cooler, more unique stuff than Ikea offers.
You can still have stuff without going hog-wild into buying stuff.