CurbAlert

What if something you no longer need could become exactly what a neighbor is looking for, instead of ending up in a garbage truck?

That's the idea behind CurbAlert. It gives people a simple way to post usable items they're putting out for bulk pickup, so someone nearby has a chance to claim them before the collection window closes.

Each post includes the item's name, condition, approximate location, and pickup deadline. Live countdowns make the urgency easy to see, while color-coded labels help people spot items that need attention soon. Neighbors can call dibs, mark items as picked up, and see the rescue statistics update. There's also a bulk-pickup reminder, search and sorting controls, and JSON export for backing up data.

I built CurbAlert with React and Vite. It stores data in the browser, so the demo works without accounts or a backend and retains changes after a refresh.

One challenge was making the item's journey clear. An item should move from available to claimed and then picked up without confusing users or leaving the statistics out of sync. The countdowns and filters also needed to make finding an item quick rather than turning the board into clutter. Another one was, I couldn't make my own github account so I used my friend's.

I learned that encouraging reuse isn't always about getting people to care more about waste; sometimes it's about making the right opportunity visible at the right moment. Next, I'd test CurbAlert with local residents, improve location privacy, and explore shared storage so neighbors could see one another's posts.

AI-use disclosure: I used AI coding assistance during development and tested the main posting, claiming, pickup, filtering, and persistence workflows. The current version is a local prototype, not a live neighborhood service.