Hi there, Mrs. 1500 back again for another round of Ask the Readers.
Last week, I asked for your criteria for donations. How long do you have to have not worn an outfit before you donate it? Do you keep turkey pans or buy disposable every year because you only use them once a year?
Done by Forty wrote that they, too are purging and are getting rid of a set number of items per month. I like this concept, and may adopt it in the future, when I really start unpacking.
Done by Forty also has a set number of hangers in the closet, and when something new is purchased, something old is donated. Anna from Are Ya Gonna Eat That does the same thing – in fact has empty hangers right now!
And Carla at A Thousand Candles gave me a great piece of advice, only donate it if someone else can use it. To not waste volunteers’ time by donating something just to not have to throw it away. I really need to keep this in mind, because I can remember clearly putting things in boxes thinking “if they can’t use/sell it, they can toss it.” Oops!
This morning, we start construction on the new house. Well, we started ripping off the old siding yesterday and have two sides of the garage done. John, the guy we found on Craigslist to do the bulk of the work, will be here soon, and Home Depot is dropping off the siding this morning. I get to start painting the siding. All of it. All eleventy million pieces of it. By hand. Anyone want to sling some paint? The girls will help, so that will shave about 7 seconds off my time. But we finally agreed on colors (Mr. 1500 wanted something in the brown family, but our last house was tan on the outside, and almost every wall inside was also tan. I am SO done with brown. What can Brown do for me? Change colors!!!) I will be able to start unpacking when we return from RAGBRAI, our annual bicycle ride across the great state of Iowa! Anyone else riding?
And now to this week’s question:
A few years ago, I started collecting aluminum cans, with the goal in mind of turning them in for vast sums of cash at the end of the summer. Whenever I went walking with the stroller, I put a plastic bag in the back, and as I passed cans on the street, I would pick them up. I even bought a can smasher for the garage.
I took 4 large black garbage bags to the can place mentally tallying my enormous payday. Imagine my surprise when the total was $32. Thirty-two lousy dollars for 4 very large garbage bags of cans.
It turns out I took them in when the price of aluminum was the lowest in 4 years, or something like that. Still, $8 a bag hardly seemed worth my time, so I stopped saving them and instead just put them in the recycle bin along with everything else.
Have you ever saved cans? I remember as a kid, my brother did it. I thought he got some large payoff at the end, but perhaps he didn’t. Or maybe I am remembering back to a time when $32 would seem like a lot of money.
Is there anything you do to make a little extra cash with little work? Might it be worth it to start saving cans again, and watching the price of aluminum to get a better deal when it is time to cash them in?
I remember collecting cans as a kid and have gone off and on with saving them now as an adult. It’s definitely not going to net a big return but if it’s just picking up cans on the street like you did and adding whatever cans from your household’s use you’re still getting cash for what would have just been thrown away. As long as the scrap metal/recycling center is close by or on the route of a common trip then I’d still do it. I wish I had a truck or SUV because where I work I’m sure I could bring 2-4 trash bags full of smashed cans home every 2-3 weeks. Since they would have just ended up in a landfill I’d take that small amount of cash.
I remember as a kid earning the $20 or so and feeling like I was on top of the world. Now not so much. Although smashing the cans is still fun.
JC @ Passive-Income-Pursuit recently posted…Income Update – June 2013
JC, I really like your point of view. It is getting cash for something that would have otherwise been tossed, which earns me nothing. I will have to find the recycling center in our new town and see if it is on an errand route.
I wouldn’t let a lack of SUV stop you from bringing home cans in bags. Not sure if they have separate recycling containers that just get tossed, or if you would have to dig through the trash, but just asking people to save their cans for you would net you some. Bring them home (if you have a place to store them) and take them on an errand once or twice a year. I have a Honda Element and can fill up the back pretty full.
I used to collect cans as a kid, but soon learned it was just not worth our time. We actually got annexed by the city of Omaha last year, which means that we now get free recycling (and about the ONLY benefit we get) so we recycle all of our cans. That said, I always think of the Seinfeld pop bottle deposit scam when I think of collecting aluminum cans. 😉
John S @ Frugal Rules recently posted…In the Blink of an Eye
John, Mr. 1500 and I are just about the only two people on the planet who didn’t like Seinfeld, and didn’t watch more than one or two episodes. I did see the Soup Nazi one. (I sided with the soup guy.)
Most people agree with you, that it just isn’t worth their time. I am still on the fence. Free money… I am reminded of my can collecting every time I see a can on the ground, which makes me so mad. Stop littering, people!!!
LOL. With my kids, that help would add two hours to the overall project.
Collecting cans is not worth most people’s ROI, but it makes great cash for the kids.
Matt, great point! The girls can learn to pick up the cans they see on the ground, and make a few bucks on the side. I might buy a can smasher for them to use, too. Thanks for reading!
Thanks so much for the mention and the links! I think that’s the first link-back to a post my blog has had, so I’m kind of over the moon right now.
I don’t have any side hustles right now but I used to deliver pizzas in my younger days as a second job. I occasionally have visions of using the scooter to deliver pies, piled high and strapped to the rear rack…
Done by Forty recently posted…We’re back, with Gratitude
Ah, the good old days where you could deliver pizzas safely. (We just had a rather high-profile pizza delivery driver murder here in Colorado, so I am staying away from that profession.) Glad to hear you made if safely home each night.
And welcome back from California!
We used to collect cans at my grandparents’ house. We drank a LOT of caffeine free diet pepsi as kids over there, and the grand kid who crushed the cans got the cash when we brought it in. Now though, we don’t really ever buy soda, so if a can comes around, it just ends up in the recycling bin.
We don’t really do much else to bring in little paydays. Mr. PoP used to fix computers, but doesn’t do that anymore. Though if we do end up with something particularly cool that we don’t want, we list it on Craigslist and see if we can’t get $50 or so. =)
Mrs. Pop @ Planting Our Pennies recently posted…Loving Where You Live
Oh, to be soda-free. Mr. 1500 likes his Diet Mountain Dew and I am a devoted diet Coke drinker, since the days of my youth when my southern mother decided a pot of sweet tea every day was making her fat. When she switched to diet Coke, we all switched, too.
When we lived in NY, we got $0.05 a can. And we lived in an area where there were plenty of cans to collect and I was nearly 20 years younger. I don’t think TX offers anything for cans, perhaps Austin has a program. But, it seems not worth our Jolly time even if we did get the 5 cents per can here in Houston. On the other hand, if on our 5 mile walks there were lots of cans to pick up and we could burn extra calories by carrying them on our back all the way home, effectively getting paid to walk, that might perk my ears a bit! Have a kick the can kinda day, 1500!
cj recently posted…Why I No Longer Eat Cheeseburgers
$0.05 a can! Too bad I just found my forever house not located in New York. I like $0.05 per can. I would collect them if that were the case in Colorado. Of course, if that were the case, I bet I wouldn’t see so many in the parking lots…
Indeed, competition would be fierce!!! Have an uncannily delicious day. Mrs. 1500!!!!
cj recently posted…Why I No Longer Eat Cheeseburgers
When I was growing up we collecting cans and sold the Coca Cola bottles which were .10 per bottle. Back then if you got $32 you where doing great as a kid remember getting cookies for a penny and ice cream for .25 or even less. Right now if I needed some cash I would sell some of my sneakers and other thing on Craigslist/Ebay. Wouldn’t waste my time collecting can now though unless i just wanted to clean up the area.
Thomas | Your Daily Finance recently posted…June Stats, Updates, Goals, and Future Plans
Thanks, Thomas.
I don’t get the burning desire to collect cans when I am at my own house, tossing them into the recycling bin. I get it when I am out and about and I see them in the parking lots. Perhaps I just need to put a few bags in the car and pick up the ones I see there.
It’s true that collecting cans is hardly worth it anymore. I remember thinking I’d get quite a bit back, and only getting $6. It was depressing!
SuburbanFinance recently posted…Get Rich With Passive Income
I remember smiling the entire way to the can place, and being excited to see how much I would make. The smile did not go with me on the return trip home.
Here in Michigan all soft drink cans and bottles are worth 10 cents. A garbage bag of cans (not squashed) will get about $10-$15. I have to go to the grocery store anyway, so I may as well knock $10-$15 off of my bill.
How does that work? Do you have to show a receipt? What happens if you bring in a ton from other states?
Grayson, I love your comment “I have done it before and quit after my first load.” Me, too. I wasn’t expecting to make thousands, but I was expecting much more than $32…
Jake, I love that your church did a fundraiser with cans. The Boy Scouts do a lot with them, but we don’t live near any Boy Scouts collecting cans. Still, $600+ a month is better than nothing.
I never collected them as a kid, and don’t know why my brother did and I didn’t. He is 5 years younger, so by seniority in the family I should have been able to collect them…
Congrats again on your recent engagement!
Hi Mrs 1500! We recycle cans, but here in our not so environmentally friendly state, we bring them to the bins (about four miles away) ourselves. Perhaps that’s just our townhome association, but the recycling bins in the neighborhood where we walk has pitifully small bins. I get irritated about being a bit behind the times, and if I had a Thursday Rant, I would definitely attack this one. As you can see, it raises my hackles.
“All eleventy million pieces of it” and “shave 7 seconds off my time” really got me giggling!
If you come help me paint, I will keep you laughing all day long. I was able to get about 20 pieces done today, thanks to the little 1500’s. Boy are they not helpful painters. Now, if I wanted it to look like a 3-year-old painted it, then I would be all set!
In Northeastern states, California and Michigan, there is a deposit on cans. When you buy a 12 pack of soda, you pay an extra $1.60 in deposits. The same 5 cent deposit is for plastic bottles as well. Then there’s these cool machines outside grocery stores that you put your cans and plastic bottles in that tabulates how much money to pay you, and then it prints a receipt which you then take inside the grocery store and get paid out your money.
I don’t really buy things with deposits so I don’t collect cans or bottles. But an interesting thing about having deposits on cans is here in NYC, you see folks digging through trash cans (and recycling cans) to take them and add them to their rolling carts of cans and bottles. It’s not an easy living, but it’s a way to get income for folks who for reasons unknown may not have another source of income.
I used to collect cans when they were paying $0.75 to $1.50 a pound. It was easy money then. Now they pay practically nothing so I just save them and drop them at one of the free local spots when I am going by one.
This reminds me of a story I heard from an old co-worker of mine when I spent the summer working in a machine shop. They had a group that came by every so often to pick up all the scrap metal that they couldn’t use. Well, a group had come through and asked if they had any scrap metal they were giving away. The employees mistook them for the normal pick up crew and let them haul away the scrap metal. They wound up walking away with several hundred thousand dollars worth of scrap metal. The company tried to sue to get the money back but didn’t have much of a case since they gave the material away.
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i am accepting donations of pop cans and bottles. these donations help pay for 5 very special needs children to go horse back riding. i would gladly pick them up.
thank you in advance
If you’re in Colorado, we can save them for you.
Many years ago our local children’s group collected cans for charity. We did need an awful lot to make any money but it was a fun community thing to do and a lot of people suddenly found out the difference between steel and aluminium cans and the difference in volume between squashed and unsquashed cans! Since most of the drinks that come in cans are not really the sort of thing to encourage children to drink perhaps this is something better left for the parents to collect and the children to learn about volume by helping to crush the cans with adult supervision.
I accept donations of pop cans and bottles. These donations help 5 needy children to go horse riding. I will gladly pick them up. I collected cans when they were paying $ 0.75 to $ 1.50 a pound. Money was easy then. Now they practically don’t pay anything so I just save them and leave them in the free local places when I go aside.
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