Crazy Sh*t! I Sure Hope You Need It.

We have a small space between the front and screen door at the front of our home. Whenever charities call and ask for donations I pile up all of the items in this tiny little space, sometimes three or four boxes tall so they’ll be kept out of the elements and no one will take them in the night. Sure someone could open my screen door and take them, but we’d hear the door open and I figured most people wouldn’t do that.

Well today I’m donating a coffee table in addition to lots of books, housewares and clothes, so I piled up the items and placed them on the table just below the front steps of our house.

I took six boxes and bags of items outside and then went into the house to get my son ready for the day. When I came back downstairs I saw a car out in the street in front of our house and a woman walking to her car with two of the bags.

Now she was not a walking to a broken-down, dilapidated car. This was a large silver SUV that looked relatively new and in good condition. The woman didn’t knock and she didn’t ask if the items were for donation or sale, she just took them and ran off. In fact, she took all four boxes and bags of clothing, which means she made at least three trips up to my door to retrieve them.

The way the items were placed on the table, they actually looked more like we were moving or planning a yard sale. They certainly didn’t look like they were piled up for donation.

The craziest thing to me is that they were placed just at the bottom of our front steps which is at least twenty five steps from the street. We live in a single, detached home, so there are no other houses near us and you would have to go out of your way to walk up to our door. Also, nothing about this pile looked like I intended to give it away. It was neatly piled and organized, so it was clear this wasn’t an eviction of any type and there was no sign saying ‘free for the taking.’

Given the fact that this woman had the nerve to walk all the way up to my house to take these items I can only assume she needs them. At least I hope she does.

Luckily I intended to give them to charity anyway, so I suppose they have just found a home sooner than later. I say “luckily”, because if we were planning a yard sale we’d now have nothing but the table and a box of books and hangers left to sell.

8 thoughts on “Crazy Sh*t! I Sure Hope You Need It.”

  1. I’d have called the police, and got her license plate number if you could. This is straight up stealing, robbery, theft.

    Or is it possible that this woman worked for the charity and thought she’d pick them up on her way to work or something?

    Reply
    • You know for some reason I hadn’t thought of this as a crime until you mentioned it. You are right though for her to walk all the way up to my house to take my property that is certainly stealing. When I saw her going back to the car I had my son in my arms otherwise I certainly would have run out there to get the license plate number. Now I really wish I had.

      Oh and I asked the drivers of the donation truck when they came about it. They said they were definitely the only ones picking up donations that day.

      Reply
    • I really wish I would’ve gotten the tag number so the police could have found her. I wouldn’t have pressed charges, but now that she’s taken this I wonder what else she would take. What if I left the baby’s stroller in the front yard? Do I have to worry that she’d take that too.

      Reply
  2. I would bet you that she’s having a yard sale of her own. We had this happen with gardeners that work on our street. They see the items CLEARLY marked for donation to a charity and they take it themselves. We had to tell them “Sorry – but we called a charity and they are sending a truck for pickup – I can’t have there be nothing here for them when they get here.”

    Reply
    • I sure hope that’s not why she took them! I’m still so irked about this. I can’t believe she had the nerve to walk 20+ steps up to my house to help herself to things that didn’t belong to her.

      Reply
  3. There’s another possibility though – over here, when charities call, all calls are placed in the same area and they set the same collection date for everybody. Maybe this woman is living in your area, got the call, and knew the charity people were coming to that specific area that day. She then decided to help herself to your donation.

    There might be different reasons for her to do this. She might need the clothes or items, for herself or for a relative. She might be planning to do a yard sale or sell the items to a thrift store because she needs the extra money. Or she might be a little bit like my aunt, which is an absolutely fine woman on every other aspect, but she just can’t stand people “throwing fine stuff away”, and that – to her – includes donating to charities. She’s the type of person that would go through other people’s donation boxes or bags and take (she says “save”) whatever she can, or even take the whole bag and stuff it somewhere in her house, because she knows somebody that maybe will need those items sooner or later. She says she doesn’t trust charities, and that she knows better than them what to do with those items.

    I’m not saying that woman was right to take those items off you, and I wouldn’t do anything like that, but as a single woman who lives on 160$ a week paying 140$ a week on rent and bills, I try not to judge people too harshly.

    PS It just occurred to me: a friend of mine is divorcing her husband and, as they had a prenup, he got to keep the house and everything in it. She’s currently living in her car, because she can’t afford to rent a proper house, and the car happens to be a large black SUV – the only thing her husband left her. See? So many possibilites…

    Reply
    • Thanks for the comment. I’d never thought of someone casing the neighborhood when they find out that a donation truck will be in the area, but that certainly seems reasonable. I really do hope that she needed the stuff and that she isn’t hoarding it away, because she doesn’t trust charities. There were a lot of great baby clothes in those boxes and I hate to think that a child in need wouldn’t get them because they are stuffed in someone’s attic. (PS – I do agree that an SUV isn’t necessarily a sign of having money.)

      Reply

Leave a Reply to One Frugal Girl Cancel reply