The End of an Era

Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Packing up the POD:

The plan to pack up and leave our apartment in November turned out to be a great idea as we had two warm sunny days for packing up our POD. Although we weren’t nearly as ready as we should have been, we had some clutch help from Ted and Robin on Saturday and the twin-towers Ben and Jacob on Sunday. We’re really not sure where we would have been without them, as we only locked the doors at 8pm Sunday night.

Throughout the packing we found so much junk that we had been amassing over the years. Not wanting to send so much garbage into the dump, I decided to test out Dan Ariely’s theory of our reaction to free*. I gathered up anything that would normally have gone either into the trash or to Goodwill and on Saturday put an ad on Craigslist. In about half an hour the phone started ringing and people started coming over to take things; one couple in particular took just about everything they could carry.

By Sunday all the decent stuff was gone, and we were really into the garbage. We made some piles with big FREE signs and watched to see what would happen. Within minutes people were crowding around grabbing things; little girls jumping up and down over my old headbands and nail polish, families taking old kitchen goods, and even one person who grabbed an entire garbage bag full of Noah’s old T-shirts that we intended to go in the garbage because we were too embarrassed to put it out. We really couldn’t believe it, everyone took something no matter how much they made faces or laughed at the things out there. They took a huge amount of absolute garbage: half cans of purple paint, mutilated clothing, you name it. It all went. Wow, the power of free!!

*I highly recommend Predictably Irrational