For many Americans, January brings an opportunity to start anew. It’s a chance to clear out the closets, bedrooms and garages and de-clutter the house of stuff that is broken but potentially fixable by others—items we no longer use or can’t stand to look at.
But where does all that unwanted stuff go?
Try the curb. Over the past couple of weeks, we have noticed everything from scuffed bookshelves and furniture to unwanted television sets and other electronic items left out on the curb in Eagle Rock—presumably to be scooped up by passersby who consider one neighbor's trash their new treasure.
(Indeed, even upscale Hill Drive isn’t immune to the trashing—for a few days in the first week of January, a television cabinet could be seen abandoned on the curb a few blocks west of the Chateau Emanuel, where Eagle Rock celebrated its 100th anniversary with a gala dinner in November.)
Eagle Rock Patch wants to turn this issue into a community discussion. Are unwanted items on the curb an efficient and harmless form of green cycling—or are they an unsightly blight on the neighborhood that tends to lower property values? What constitutes an acceptable item to leave out for others to take—and what crosses the line into dumping?
Shortly after moving into my first house I noticed a tag scrawled across the board above my mailbox, so I grabbed a tin of paint & a brush and painted over it. A week or two later the tag was back, but I was just as quick to paint over it again. A month went by before the tag showed up, and again I immediately painted over it. I saw tags appear up and down the street, one was even sprayed on a neighbor's hedge of all things, but my mailbox went untouched. It was almost a year later when they finally tagged my mailbox but again I simply went out with my tin of paint and obliterated their tag. I lived there 6 more years and never had to paint over another tag. It's that simple. If you have a problem, do something about it. If you're not prepared to do something about it (except whine), then it can't bother you that much.