Useful Things I Learned Over This Past Week

[chanaleh]

All, interestingly, to do with cashflow, one way or another. Mostly Boston-area-specific, though (sorry, everyone else!).

MBTA minimal-hassle refund
If you are in the Kendall T station outbound, where there is (at least on the weekend) no longer any attendant on site, and the turnstile takes your money but the gate does not open... posted on the turnstiles is a "help" phone number you can call, (617) 222-3200, where someone will take your info and mail you a new CharlieCard with the amount of one fare on it, as a refund. (Unfortunately, it won't prevent you from missing your train while you call.)

Cash for your clothes
If you have unwanted clothes/shoes/bags too nice for Goodwill, you can take them to the Garment District store on Broadway near One Kendall Square (around the corner from ITA Software) and they will buy them from you. You have two choices of process:

1. While-you-wait: If you have an hour or so to spare, bring your stuff in at least an hour before closing, sign in on their clipboard, and you can either wait around or come back in an hour. They'll go through your stuff item by item, price everything they'll accept, and let you know how much it comes to. You can then take home anything they don't buy.
2. Remote: If you don't want to wait around AND are willing to donate everything they don't buy to Dollar-a-Pound (because you're just going to take it to Goodwill anyway otherwise), you can just drop off your bags of stuff with the nice counterpeople (you have to fill out a form), and they will mail you your check/credit once they go through it.

Either way, the amount you get is a fixed percentage of the total retail value they assign to your buyable stuff: 35% if you want to take the cash, 60% if you can use store credit. Me, I already have some stage makeup and other Boston Costume stuff I know I need to buy, so even if they buy a minimal percentage of the stuff I took in, this will be a win all around. Edited to add: Finally got my gift card in the mail three weeks later. They condescended to buy one piece out of the two bags I brought in. ONE. (A black Halston blazer, for the record. I loved it but it was too big for me anymore.) Oh well, it's still $12 I wouldn't have had from Goodwill.

Free books
In general, remember to use your local library. ;-) Specifically: If you have a Minuteman Library Card, you can log into their website using the number on the back of your library card/tag. Then you can stop using your Amazon cart or Goodreads to remind you of the books you find interesting, and instead start saving them to your list, where you can then request them whenever you're ready to read them.

The best way to do this is to drill down to the actual title record of the copy you want, so you make sure to get the mass market paperback rather than the hardcover, or whatever you prefer. You can click "Request" right away, or if you just want to mark it for future use, you can put it on your wish list. Note that there is a crucial difference between "Add to my Lists" (plural) and "Save to my List" (singular) -- the latter is a this-session-only sort of shopping cart, but the former is the more powerful Wish List function where you can store things by category however you choose. In my first session, I opened my Amazon Wish List and "saved for later" Shopping Cart in the next tab, and went through bookmarking all my "it'd be nice to read this someday" titles. Now I actually will, without spending money on them!

In a day or two (or several) you will get an email notice that your books are ready for pickup. Then, at your convenience, just go up to the front desk at your library branch of choice (yes, you do still have to physically go to the library to obtain and return the books) and say you have books on reserve to pick up, and they will hand you the whole pile. Time spent searching the stacks: zero (not that searching the stacks isn't fun as a leisure activity!). You can also renew books online, up to twice, if you haven't finished with them yet. Sweet!

Free computer recycling
As a few of you know, I have been traveling with a dead vintage-1997 desktop computer in my car trunk since, oh, last October, meaning to take it for recycling somewhere. Last night I finally went to Staples (the one in Assembly Square), and they took it off my hands for free to recycle. (You can also trade in any computer for $50 credit on a new one from Staples, as long as the original retail on the new one is $500 or more... not so useful to me, since I next intend to buy a netbook cheaper than that, but still worth noting.)

Postscript: Stay organized
I have been trying to clean stuff out, and I have already found a number of things I thought lost, including an important receipt I needed to give to Tiger Boy, and (still in my wallet, no joke) a voucher for ~$25 at the Harvard Book Store from my last selling-off of books there a year ago. :-) Now if only I could turn up the gym-membership voucher I won in a Maimonides raffle in March 2009!

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

The Minuteman Library System is great, isn't it?

There's even an app for the iPhone.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

There's an app for the iPhone!?!

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It allows you to see what you have checked out and the status of your requests. You can also search the catalog and renew books.

That said, it has some problems. Book renewal doesn't always work even if a book can be renewed. And it would be better if you could request a book from within the app.

But in general, it's a nice way to be able to check on what you have out and what you have coming in.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

While I am usually pretty lawful, I do permit myself to cheat the turnstiles against exiting passengers, when the turnstile has decided to cheat me first.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

You know, I somehow didn't think of that! or maybe there were just no exiters exiting at the time I was busily getting Very Upset about it.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

I have been explicitly told by an attendant to do that.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

The attendants apparently don't have any legitimate mechanic to let someone through, which does seem like a design flaw.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I hear from my Sekrit Source that the Minuteman system is about to get a much-needed interface upgrade, too!

I've been using it a lot over the past couple of months after not using the library for more than a decade for myself and it is an awesome power.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

OH THANK GOD. The interface was a complaint I was going to include in my notes and forgot. ;-)

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Oh wow! i've been using the library to request books instead of buying them for several years, but somehow missed that there is an "add to my lists" feature so I can do something other than request the book right away. That is very helpful!

[inseriatim.livejournal.com]

Ditto. That's awesome!

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Another cool thing about the library --- if you want a book that's not in Minuteman, you can submit an "interlibrary loan request". This is more powerful than the Minuteman system library-to-library exchange; I've taken books out from the Brandeis collection, for example, by sending an ILL request in to Newton.

[arib.livejournal.com]

Oh, that computer recycling thing is gonna come in handy. I have an old desktop that's been gathering dust in a closet for at least five years now...

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Not that we'd lug them up to Boston, but given that I tossed several pairs of perfectly-good pants into the Goodwill box last month, it would have been nice to know such options existed.

[alaria-lyon.livejournal.com]

You make me wish I went near kendall square (or knew someone who did and could drop off my clothes).

[magickcat.livejournal.com]

Staples is crazy evil, and I wouldn't buy a pencil from them after what they did to a member of my family, let alone make a "donation" that they will make money off of.
A really easy way to get rid of that sort of stuff is to post it on Craigslist, which is also free, AND you don't have to take it anywhere (unless you agree to deliver or something)

The Harvard Bookstore is awesome.

[inseriatim.livejournal.com]

I wanted to let you know: Since you made this post, I've started going to the library almost every week and have taken out ~40 books, twice as many as I had in the preceding five years. I had known, vaguely, that you can request books, but I didn't realize that they wouldn't get mad at you if you *only* request books (instead of spending time searching the stacks) and I had no idea about lists. It was a small thing that made a big difference to me. Thank you!

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

<3

It's great living in the future, no? :-)