I just had central heat and air installed in my house. Love it, but now I have window units and deerborn heaters taking up room in my garage. What should I do with them? I am thinking about giving the to the Salvation Army and get a tax deduction for them. Any other ideas?
I doubt if the Salvation Army will take them. I know that Goodwill won't. Timing is everything. Try to get rid of the heaters now, and the air conditioners next spring. You can try the Freecycle organization to see if they have a local chapter in your area.
Use them in the garage?
Is there any place nearby that will take the stuff and either sell or auction it. We have such a place in central Delaware. They call it a bazaar. It consists of a flea market, produce sales and auction.
I just went the other way. Put a window unit in the bedroom. Dropped my electric bill by 2/3rds this past summer and I expect similar savings this winter using a space heater instead of central heat.
I'm not sure if you mean this, but when I can't find a charitable organization to take something, I'll give it to a profit-making place.
It's better than having it destroyed. Not only because the earth is only on loan to us from God, and his things are not for us to waste.
But also because it lowers prices for everyone when things are reused and raises them when they aren't.
Something wortth 50$ isn't going to lower prices for 300,000,000 Americans much, not even a measurable amount, but it will some.
So if a Hamfest of a ham radio club has a table where it sells things, I'll give something to that table. If not, if it is small, I may give it to a vendor of used stuff and tell him he can keep the money when he sells it. Or, if it is big enough to be noticed, I leave it by the entrrance with a post-it that says FREE on it, or by the oil-drum garbage cans.
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Philosophy aside (and I do agree with it), you can try joining your local Freecycle group and see if someone on the list wants those old items.
In addition, there's another organization called cheapcycle that has a lot of local groups. It's based on the freecycle concept.
There's also craigslist.com And you don't need to register.
I put it out by the road. Goes fast.
To comment on my own post. Things left at hamfests are very often taken by someone who thinks he can fix them or use them, but anything not taken is collected and turned into trash at the end of the afternoon, or the next day.
For AC unit and heaters, that woked, I would ask hardware stores if they want them, to sell. I'd tell them they can keep the money, or do something nice with part or all of it. (If I were in their shoes, the harder I had to work to sell the stuff, the less good I would try to do with the money, like if I had to put them out in the morning and take them in, If some hardwares stores don't want them, I'd go to a poorer neighborhood, or a thrift shop, and give them to them, whether I got a tax receipt or not.
For other kinds of things, especially if one lives on a busy street and not on a court, one can determine when his trash is connected, and put the items out by the curb the *following* day, so that there are 3 days or 6 days when someone passing by can take them.
Signs that say FREE, and WORKS make it much more likely someone will stop and take them.
On one occasion in Brooklyn, NY, I was coming back from the beach on my bicycle, and I found a 9 inch tv on top of a garbage can just inside someone's yard. In NY, that means it is there to be taken. So while I was trying to figure out how to attach it to my little luggage rack, the owner of the home came out with a lot of twine for me so that I could tie it to the bike rack. She even told me, "I think it is just one tube." In fact, it was just a fuse, and the tv still works fine.
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