Hi. My name is Kayla.

NYT | Living With Less. A Lot Less. http://nyti.ms/ZzTIF6

PandoDaily: Accumulating Stuff is Easy, Bondsy Helps Us Get Rid of It

Saw this on PureWow today. Amazon’s new fulfillment program encourages you to send them stuff you don’t want and reap a profit when they sell it for you. They even send you the mailing labels. Seems easy peasy.

I’m getting some boxes this week to test this puppy out…

Loved these moving tips from Justine Garrett of The Hairpin. She says when you decide to move and are evaluating which items you should keep, donate or sell, you should agonize over each object for any or all of the following reasons:

• The amount of money you spent on it and its genuine worthlessness now.
• How little you actually used it despite your promises to yourself when you bought it.
• The loving moments that you and your current or former husband or boyfriend had within a 10-foot radius of it.
• How much your landlord will charge you if you leave it.
• How much weight you’ve gained or lost in such a short period of time (and weight gain, weight loss, or a change in eating habits are also life stressors!).
• Whether the people at Out of the Closet will make snide remarks when you donate it.
• How much your friends will judge you when they’re moving it.

My advice is sell it all.

AWESOME. Remember Kelly Sutton? The 23-yr-old software engineer living in Brooklyn who made a name for himself this summer by publicly ridding his life of almost everything he owns (apart from his digital / Internet technology)?

Well, NBC Nightly News caught wind of the Cult of Less blogger and featured him in a story last night about how more and more people are super-simplifying their lives.

The report itself is a super-simplified version of what’s really going on in our culture, but it’s a good overview nonetheless. Enjoy.

Wired: Abandon Ownership! Join the Rentership Society!

Everything, everywhere, all the time. That’s the dream of the Rentership Society. And we’re almost there. If you want to be able to possess some things, in some places, some of the time, well, keep on buying. But I vote for infinite abundance, on demand. Doesn’t that sound like the new century’s American dream?

Yoink | Get Free Things From People Near You (And Give Away Stuff You Don’t Need)

I just read about Yoink in the latest Netted by the Webby’s e-newsletter today and I’m intrigued. Not crazy about the free model, but it looks like a good concept.

Throwing household items away means they’ll end up in a landfill somewhere, which, as Al Gore would tell you, is bad. 

To help do the right thing with your stuff try Yoink, a site that allows you to donate (and accept) free items from people in your area.

Start by clicking the interactive map to see what items are being given away in your locale. Everything from kitchenware to writing desks is up for grabs.

If you find something that you want, click “Yoink” and set up a free account.  From there, Yoink will act as an intermediary and relay messages between you and the person donating the object so that you can arrange for a pickup.

If you have items that you’d like to give away, just fill in a description that’s 140 characters or less (you can also attach photos) along with your location. Yoink will contact you whenever someone voices interest in your item.

There’s also a free iPhone app that allows you to search for free things in your area, get directions to people who are giving you things and interact with community members.  It also features something called “generosity stats,” which rank the most generous cities on a worldwide scale.

Finally, some truth that’s also convenient.

I like you already, SnapGoods. Any website that helps you own less and do more is all right by me.

Own Less. Do More.

SnapGoods is the online place for sharing and renting stuff with your friends and sampling products from local businesses.

Need to build a bookshelf? Rent a drill for the day. Want to go mountain biking with your friends this weekend? We’ve got bikes. Closet crammed with camping gear? Earn some extra cash. Safely. Because we’ve got your back.

Welcome to the Access Economy.

There has been a major shift in our nation’s consumption patterns and Stephanie Rosenbloom of The New York Times tries to tell us why. Read the entire article here:

The New York Times
But Will It Make You Happy?
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
August 7, 2010

… And it looks like she’s still on the hunt for more people who are downsizing, de-cluttering, living simply and loving it.

Sam Lessin, founder of drop.io, lays out the true costs of owning things and rallies for liquidity. Awesome.

“‘Ownership’ is becoming an inferior good. If you can afford it, you should pay someone else to own things for you.”

Artist Justin Gignac has sold 1,200 $50 boxes of New York City garbage.

Genius.

Niice.

“Start-up eRecyclingCorps on Tuesday is scheduled to announce that its customer Sprint is offering a phone buyback program in which consumers can get money for older phones when they upgrade to a newer model.

eRecycling Corp has developed an in-store application and a Web service, offered from Sprint’s site. The application lets a person see how much an older phone is worth and get a credit for its residual value when buying a new one. A consumer can also use a Web site from home, mail a phone in, and get a credit for the returned product.”

Originally posted at cnet.com.

There are way too many couch casualties on the streets of New York.

People just use and abuse them for a few years and then throw them to the curb. This tattered old guy was thrown right outside my apartment this morning.

Just a few weeks ago, a friend of a friend offered to let me sell his old sofa set for him online.

I called a day too late.

“It was taking up too much room,” he says. “Threw it out yesterday.”

What a sad concept.

If you haven’t yet noticed, it frustrates me to no end when I learn that someone bought something new and decided to throw away the old.

Please trust me on this golden piece of advice:

There is always a market out there for every. single. item. you. own.

Please stop throwing things away.

Yes, someone will pay you money for your old couch.

Yes, someone will pay money for your 2-year old Dell computer.

Yes, someone will pay you money for your old pots and pans.

And today, you should know that it’s easier than ever to find that person online.

Just ask Wired’s famed editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. If you haven’t gotten around to reading his New York Times best-seller The Long Tail, you should. One of the best business books I’ve ever read. When describing resale giant eBay, Anderson argues:

“… companies like these have not only expanded existing markets, but more important, they’ve also discovered entirely new ones. Moreover, in each case those new markets that lie *outside* the reach of the physical retailer have proven to be far bigger than anyone expected — and they’re only getting bigger.”

It’s amazing to me how much people underestimate the “hidden majority” of people out there in the Long Tail who are scrounging the Internet every day looking for an item you just decided to throw away.

So please. Just make that teeny bit of effort to go out and find that person.

unconsumption:

“Your donated cell phones won’t go directly to quake victims — instead, ReCellular refurbishes and sells the phones in developing countries as an alternative to new models. The full value of each donated phone is then contributed to the American Red Cross.”

Well I guess this book reaffirms that I am as American as they come.

I’m fascinated by the concept of planned obsolescence — When products are purposefully manufactured to break easily so that we just go out and buy new to replace it.

Thankfully, an article by Farhad Manjoo that ran on Slate.com last year assured me that this uniquely American concept of “designing products for the dump” is dying a slow death.

And that’s good news for people like me.

Because consumer electronic products today are increasingly being manufactured to last longer, and nearly everything now runs on Internet-updatable software, it has become easier for people to sell the old, trade up, and not feel like a terrible person for doing so.

After all, I never send my stuff to the dump. I make sure to always find it a good home.

And as long as there’s a market for my stuff, I’m going to keep selling.

It amazes me that major consumer product companies like Apple haven’t shifted to an Ownership 2.0 business model.

What’s Ownership 2.0?

This guy explains the concept quite well on his blog:

Ownership 2.0 models are distinguished by providing cyclical total ownership solutions that allow a customer to decide all parts of the buy/own/dispose process at the point-of-purchase.

Increasingly customers know that they don’t want to own an item forever, and Ownership 2.0 models help these customers acquire items in a manner that simultaneously helps them dispose of them later.

To me, this model is a no-brainer.

I can’t tell you what a relief it would be to be able to go the Apple Store tomorrow, buy the new Magic Mouse I’ve been eyeing, and also sign up for a buyback plan that would guarantee me 50% of my investment in 6 months. That way, when Apple released the new Mighty Magic Super Duper Mouse 6 months from now, I’d be primed, ready, and more than willing to make the upgrade.

With services like Netflix, Chegg, Avelle (formerly Bag Borrow or Steal) and my new fave, Rent The Runway, I think we’re getting used to concept of renting items that we wouldn’t normally consider to be rentable.

… Isn’t it time for a bigger shift?

Amazing project.

I haven’t seen the movie, but after watching this trailer I couldn’t help but wonder… What happened to all of the modern conveniences he ousted from his life? (TV, toaster, microwave, blender, etc.)

I would have made a fortune for him on Craigslist.

(Click here to read more about No Impact Man.)

BUY MY STUFF

I’m going to sell my BlackBerry Curve 8320 (yep, that’s it on the left) and replace it with the BlackBerry Bold 9700 on April 1, 2010.

Want it? Make me an offer and I’ll give you first dibs on my old smartphone before I post it on Craigslist or eBay.

Trust me, she’s a beaut.

My roommate got a new set of pots and pans for Christmas and wanted to throw his old set—a perfectly good set of pots—in the trash.

Ridiculous.

I snapped a photo and posted them on Craigslist for $20. Took me 10 minutes.

Exactly five days later, I have $20 bucks in my pocket, a family in my neighborhood scored a set of pots for half of what they sell for at Bed, Bath & Beyond and the NYC landfill is a little less full.

Now how hard was that?