One of the easiest ways to be kinder on the environment in our crazily consumerist society is to appreciate things secondhand. Thrifting, yard sales, and even controversial practices like dumpster diving all contribute to being one less individual blindly adding to the billion dollar profits of Amazon or similar.
However, this way of life has its downsides. You have to have a keen eye for quality control, and know the risks of acquiring something that has had one or more previous owners. This is doubly true when you're picking up a freebie: you might not be able to believe your eyes when it comes to some of the stuff that people throw out, but sometimes this is for good reason.
This conundrum is at the center of a controversy that has dominated social media over the past few days. A woman on TikTok went viral after revealing how she had found a designer couch sitting on the sidewalk in NYC, choosing to clean it up and take it into her home.
While @yafavv.manda was delighted with her new furniture, many social media users were more than a little skeptical about her find. Many had questions about how hygienic it was, and speculated that the couch might come with a side order of vermin infestation. Others still suggested that it might be a cheap dupe of the brand that it was meant to be. While its new owner remained unbothered, the sofa still inspired its fair share of silly posts about it. Here's hoping all those bedbug predictions don't come true.