The 119 items offered on Freecycle from Aug. 20-26 ranged from the obviously useful (a router, a used but clean futon) to the questionable (a drill with a busted cord, a child’s sparkly gymnastics leotard) to the random (38 plain ivory note cards with envelopes, a single box of tea).
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Take advantage of other people’s expensive tastes, and buy their used clothes at a fraction of the price they paid for them. You can even furnish and decorate your dorm room with used items like bedding, towels, rugs, microwave, pictures and various other articles.
Don’t be embarrassed about using second-hand things. Boast about how much you save by bargain hunting, and you will have other people asking where you shop so they can get in on the savings too. Don’t be afraid to use Freecycle either. Take on a new motto: “If it’s free, it’s for me!”
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4. Get thrifty to stay stylish and save: When I was a kid, the thought of buying anything secondhand grossed me out, but now that I’m old and wise, I realize some of the coolest stuff out there was owned by someone else first. Flea markets, garage/yard sales, Craigslist, eBay, and Freecycle all have awesome stuff for next to, or literally, nothing.
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The first is Freecycle, online proof that one person’s trash is another’s treasure.
If you sign up to become a member of what founder Deron Beal describes as “a craigslist for free stuff,” you can offer any item you own to other members, as long as you’re willing to give it away for free.
Members have unloaded collections of buttons, mismatched socks, chipped-up concrete from a torn-out driveway, broken bicycles and tables with missing legs. They’ve also given away perfectly good but unwanted wedding gifts, clothing, appliances and computers.
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To thin the clutter in her home, Bernice Hunter joined a group called Freecycle, a Web-based community formed to allow people to give away things they don’t need and receive stuff they do need, for free.
Communicating online with people in her neighborhood, Hunter, a 57-year-old technical writer in Tucker, gave away hundreds of books, a half-dozen pieces of furniture, planters, philodendron cuttings, a broken router — perhaps 1,200 items. To hear her describe it, the experience has been exhilarating.
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Technology only feeds the communal urge. Never mind Craigslist, where folks share everything from rehearsal space to sex partners. The 48,000 New Yorkers who subscribe to the local FreeCycle.org email list post roughly 75 messages a day requesting free goods (a 10-gallon aquarium, hangers, a diabetic cookbook) and offering stuff they don’t want (moving boxes, eight cans of Alpo, a 40-inch TV). My recent request for a used fridge yielded what looks like a legitimate offer, along with several notes from folks who apologized for not having a refrigerator to give away.
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Eustace mentioned a variety of the Green Team’s current and future projects: a community garden, water conservation, a town-wide garage sale in the fall and every so often, a freecycling clothing exchange.
“That’s been very successful,” said Eustace of the clothing exchange. “We’re considering a freecycle sports equipment program.”
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Mark Boyle, 31, gave up using money in November 2008. He lives in a caravan that he got from Freecycle (uk.freecycle.org), which is parked at an organic farm near Bristol, where Boyle volunteers three days a week. He grows his own food, has a wood-burning stove and produces electricity from a solar panel (it cost £360 before the experiment started). He has a mobile phone for incoming calls only and a solar-powered laptop. Boyle, who has been vegan for six years, set up the Freeconomy in 2007 (justfortheloveofit.org), an online network that encourages people to share skills or possessions and now has 17,000 members. The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living (Oneworld Publications, £10.99) is out now.
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Another website great for getting you free stuff is freecycle.org. It enables members to give away unwanted items, allowing you to pick up a washing machine, barbecue, or anything else that you might want but cannot afford absolutely free. You also gain environmental brownie points, as it helps the environment by reducing the amount thrown into landfill.
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Hit Freecycle. If you need equipment, one great place to start looking for it is Freecycle. Basically, Freecycle is a resource for people looking to give away unwanted things – and many of those things are quite nice and useful. Subscribe, pay attention, and you’ve got a good chance at finding the things that you need. I’ve walked away from it with multiple items over the past few years.
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