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Comment by specialp | Hacker News Reader

I have a good paying job, yet I 100% will pick up major appliances or lawn mowers from the garbage if they are somewhat recent with no shame. It is very rare that they have some issue that is worth discarding over. I get tons of junk mail and behind a doctor's office they threw out a $1700 heavy duty paper shredder. It turned out to be a dead hall field sensor to detect when it jams. $25 from fellowes.

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That's cool but watch out for hoarding. While I agree with picking up discarded fixable or like new appliances, there are so many of them out there that one may end up hoarding.

My wife learned that youth shelters/foster parenting agencies need suitcases to help the children move their clothing and stuff around. The usual alternative children get: garbage bags.

We collected up suitcases off the curb that in theory need minor mending (no smells, certain problems left behind), and over time the backlog has built up. Time is also an ingredient, here; in the best case it takes fifteen minutes to prep a curb suitcase, in the worst (cleaning stains, etc.) the suitcase might need to sit around in a ventilated area for days over the course of treatment.

That's fantastic, I hadn't thought of this. I'm going to keep an eye out for curb suitcases now. Thanks for sharing

Do you never wonder about stuff like bed bugs when you pick up stuff like suitcases off the street? I feel like I'm overly paranoid about that.

Have a friend who had a habit of picking up furniture etc from the side of the road, and (perhaps related) got bedbugs. I am very very hesitant to do the same.

Even I would hesitate to pick up upholstered furniture from the side of the road.

Right? That's like inviting someone else's home into your home. Not even that but their trash. Way to risky for me and I love finding free stuff.

Definitely, but I would use a similar amount of caution with used luggage. Luggage is used for visiting many places, left in hotel rooms and overhead bins (high traffic areas), hold clothes, lots of seams and nooks and crannies ... pretty ideal bedbug territory.

There are a few strategies you can use, dependent on the time of year -- they don't like it cold (assuming you don't give them a chance to adapt), nor overly hot, and the suitcases can also be quarantined. I wouldn't drag them into core living areas of your space, right off.

One addition I'll make: locally there is a bulk pickup day twice a year that people hold things for; if it was a suitcase wrapped in plastic or out on a non-bulk pickup day, I likely would steer clear.

Put the clothes in a garbage bag, tie it. Use suitcase for structure.

Yes this is true. I don't pick up lawnmowers anymore because mine is fine. But I have given some of my old ones to people that just moved into a home and stuff. And yes I am selective about appliances unless I know a friend needs one. Currently everything I own is plugged in and being used, no yard full of junk :).

As for the Hall field sensor yeah I know I probably could have found an equivalent on Digikey and saved $15 or so when you factor in the shipping, but the convenience factor and knowing that I just fixed an otherwise fine $1700 commercial shredder for $25 is fine.

Dave from EEVblog does that a lot, found a new fancy 4k TV in the trash, managed to fix it by reflowing a single chip, works like a charm now.

Unless there's been an update since EEVBlog #1154, he identified that the faulty part was bad solder on a single chip, but he screwed up the reflow. Presuming nothing else was damaged in the process (such as via a hypothetical power pin short), the chip would need to be re-balled and replaced.

no he didnt, he managed to destroy the mainboard by doing his _first reflow ever_ without any kind of preparation, and later fixed that TV by replacing all the electronics inside

I'd say we got good content out of it so it was a bigger win than getting a tv.

Entertainer, definitely not a fixer. Here is a good list of people actually repairing stuff:

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/interesting-youtube-repa...

Sounds like a business opportunity

lol yes that's called "local junk man"

A Hall sensor is 10¢, you’ve overpaid 100x for a brand name part :)

To buy anything at 10c you have to order a huge quantity of them which usually ends up costing more than the expensive single item cost.

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