this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Fuck Cars
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As someone who doesn’t have a license or a car, but does bike a lot - there will be solutions.
I order my groceries delivered. When I needed to get my old bed recycled, I asked the second hand store and they came and picked it up. They weren’t interested in the broken mattress for it (obviously), so I contacted a moving company and they had it recycled for $40.
Now I get that that cost might be hard to swallow for some, but keep in mind that I don’t pay for my car, its insurance, the fuel, or maintenance, and it took less than five minutes for me to be done with the entire thing. All I had to do was open my front door and two burly men came and picked it up for me. I didn’t even have to wait at the recycling station.
Those $40 paid for themselves.
It’s also worth noting that I do live in the frozen north (not Canada, further north), where we don’t see the sun for half the year. I see people biking year round.
Where I live it costs $40 to drop a mattress off for recycling, and almost anyone who will sell you a mattress will take the old one away for about $40
I actually asked IKEA if they would recycle the old bed, but sadly they stopped that during corona and there hasn’t been much demand for the service since so they just don’t offer that anymore.
Segue: I’d bought my previous bed from MIO. It was a continental, bought right at the start of corona because at the time companies had massive discounts since they were scared that people would stop spending during the pandemic. At the time it replaced my 15 year old bed that was really worn, and at 50% off (7k instead of 14, currency is SEK) I was like “wow, what a steal!”
Then the middle mattress broke after less than three years. Couldn’t figure out why I had such a big divot in the middle of the bed, but as it turns out the side had broken and as such the springs had all gotten misaligned.
Called them in September, three years and six months or so after purchase. Turns out that the bed had a 10 year warranty but the mattress only had 3.
So I had to buy a new bed, much cheaper (like 6K with the mattress), from IKEA, and their mattress has a TEN year warranty. It’s also much firmer and more supportive so I regret not just going with them in the first case.
Never buying shit from MIO again.
The psychology behind prices surrounding cars is outright evil. You don't even notice how much you spend on them because everything is auto-deducted from your accounts (insurance, registration, etc.), gas is death by a thousand cuts, and repairs are seen as a necessity because it's your transportation.
I'm well aware I'm saving money by not having a car. However, spending $40 on bike maintenance every few months feels so much more expensive than $400 on a car, even though the bike is my transportation.