By Katie Stein & Maxim Tamarov, news staff

On Sept. 1, Allston Christmas brought its usual chaos to Boston as thousands of rental units changed hands from outgoing to incoming students. The Allston Christmas tradition dates back to the ‘60s and refers to large quantities of furniture and household goods that litter the streets of the Allston, Brighton and Mission Hill areas during college move-in time.

“I put out a bedside table,” Victoria Hills, a recent Wellesley College graduate previously in a sublet in Allston, said. “I don’t know if it got picked up.”

Hills said that although she was busy moving into another apartment on the first, she saw many neighbors putting out furniture beforehand.

“There were lots of bookshelves, tables, lamps, broken furniture and futons,” Hills said.

Most items are discarded by students whose rooms couldn’t hold the furniture they brought. Abandoned items are free for anyone to take, but are indistinguishable from the occasional item temporarily left on the street. The free-for-all atmosphere results in  a considerable amount of unintentionally stolen goods every year.

“We ran into women who apparently found a laptop and an iPod,” Andrew Jang, a recent graduate of Tufts University who participated in the trash-to-treasure hunt, said.

Elizabeth Boyles, a 2014 graduate from the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, described her hellish experiences moving into Allston before starting graduate studies at Northeastern.

“What a nightmare,” Boyles said, “although I got a free dresser.”

Jang however managed an impressive bounty, despite not starting his hunt until around 7 p.m. on the rainy Allston Christmas.

“We found a large black dresser and nightstand. Then we started finding electronics: a cylindrical fan, a computer monitor. There was a really nice table. The table was too big to take, but on it was a large 40 inch TV, just soaking in the rain,” Jang said.

Jang took the flatscreen TV home and let it dry on his porch for two days.

“Surprisingly, it still works,” Jang said.

But there were definite downsides to the move-in move-out fiasco. Boyles complained about the traffic and the people double-parking on one-way streets. She was also in for a surprise when she finally reached her new residence.

“I get to the door — my front door key didn’t work,” Boyles said. “In the Allston Christmas rush my realtor had mixed up [the front door key] with the mailbox key.”

Photo courtesy of Selkie, Creative Commons.