Online communities
The web has enabled us to make giving away our unwanted things easier. Most already know of Freecycle where you can post ads for unwanted items you want to give away and search for things going for free in your local area.
Read more
Clothes: a child’s only requirement is to be warm and dry. We would use only swaps from friends or bundles from Freecycle, the website that matches people who have things they don’t want with people who can use them. Toys: ditto. Food: out with the kiddy rice cakes, little cheeses and special squashes. He would just eat his share of the three meals a day that we cook for ourselves. Cloth nappies (given away via “swap or sell” pages on Facebook); kitchen haircuts; activities concocted at home instead of at soft-play centres. We could go a whole year without engaging in any kiddy consumerism, barring essential items such as medicines. Johnny wouldn’t even notice.
Read more
Back at home, I looked in on the chicks. The injured birds looked to be in bad shape. Napoleon (as I’d christened the bully chick that morning) was angry and aggressive. What am I going to do? I did not have it in me to dispatch Napoleon. And so, in my time of crisis, I turned to Freecycle.
If you don’t know about Freecycle, you should. It’s a national network of people, linked on the Internet, who give things away and ask for things. The rule is, everything is free. For example, when I got a new printer for Christmas, I posted an offer for my old printer on Freecycle. When someone responded to the posting, we arranged for them to pick up the old printer.
Read more
TAHOE/TRUCKEE, Calif. — “Freecylcing” is a way to get rid of things kicking around your house and of no use to you. Instead of paying the garbage company to carry them away, post your items online at www.freecycle.org and someone else might just need them. We had a box of old random ceramic tiles in our garage. These were the “extra” tiles they always give you in case one should break on your bathroom or kitchen countertop. We posted them and they were gone by the next day. We have also given away fabric remnants, old National Geographics, twin-sized sheets for college-sized twin beds, and a perfectly good inkjet printer that didn’t have the correct connection for our new laptop
Read more
At some point, most of us have probably given away things we didn’t need to friends or family members. But what should you do when you don’t know anyone who wants the leftover dirt from your gardening project or your old lawnmower? One solution is to check out The Freecycle Network, an organization that encourages people to participate in a culture of giving.
Freecycle, a website founded in May of 2003 by Deron Beal of Tucson, Ariz., began when Beal wanted to donate a bed, but couldn’t find any local organizations willing to accept one. Beal wanted to create a way for people to give away items that still had value, but that might otherwise end up in a landfill. To solve the problem, Beal got together a small group of friends interested in sharing the things they no longer needed, and that initial group has grown into a project that boasts 9 million members in more than 110 countries.
Read more
Have you heard about Freecycle? Most communities have one. It’s an amazing opportunity to either purge your unwanted stuff or go treasure hunting. As with most people the beginning of each new year is the time to clean out the old and make room for new stuff. Time for organizing closets, and cabinets, and so on. I have been a little OCD over the past week or so going through the house and making piles of “things to keep”, “things to donate” and “things to get rid of” and trust me there are a lot of things that I would like to find new homes for and Freecycle is a great way to do that. Just yesterday I listed a bunch of stuff and it already has been claimed by various people anxious to come and collect it. Whats the old saying??? “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” and that certainly is true. Over the next few days I hope to purge a bunch more stuff on freecycle, list a bunch of stuff on either Craig’s list or Ebay and most likely make several trips to our local recycling center to drop off misc. other stuff. Oh, it feels so good!
Read more
However, there is a movement afoot to be more thrifty and creative by reusing, repairing and buying secondhand items at a much-reduced cost. The technological age in some ways has made people more isolated, but when it comes to sharing or buying items, the world is small and the connections for free items are astonishing. Freecycle (www.freecycle.org) is a site where people post items they are giving away or items they need. Everything is free. There are 5,082 groups, so you can sign up for a local group for easy pick-up of items. Things to donate or take range from furniture to building materials to anything that is legal, not a weapon or pornography, etc. Several years ago, we had a bulky computer, keyboard and tower that neither our friends nor we wanted. We posted it on Freecycle and with in a day we had a mom at our doorstep thrilled to be providing her son with a full computer set-up. Craiglist (www.craigslist.org) also has incredible secondhand items for sale and some items for free.
Read more
So, we finally got rid of the futon. It was broken, but I posted a full disclosure notice on the Charlottesville-Albemarle Freecycle list.
Futon, mission style frame wih mattress & coverAfter a few email exchanges and phone calls to arrange pick up between snow showers, a woman and her dad borrowed a truck to come get the futon; let’s call them Helen and James.
We showed Helen and James where the futon frame needs repair.
“I’m a carpenter by trade. This will be no problem,” said James.
Rick had already told me the frame could be repaired for under $10, so any guilt I had about passing on broken stuff, even for free, was really evaporating.
Read more
Bring some, take some, for free
Tucson-based group sponsoring ‘no strings attached’ meet-ups
The guests have gone, the holiday hullabaloo hushed.
What’s left: stuff. Ribbons. Wrapping paper. And an assortment of misguided gifts and other unwanted items that promise to take up space for the next year, if not forever.
Rather than throw these things away, wouldn’t it be great to give them to someone who could love them – and even get something you truly want in return?
Freecycle.org, founded by Deron Beal on May 1, 2003, enables exactly that.
Beal created the website so that locals could sign up on a list server to unload items or request things they want to find.
Beal says the website he founded in Tucson now serves communities in more than 110 countries, and he expects to reach 10 million participants worldwide this year.
Read more
Freecycle Network is a nonprofit organization started in 2003 in Arizona. Since then, Freecycling has spread to cities all over the U.S., and to 85 countries around the world.
Millions of members have joined since its inception almost 10 years ago, and together they keep 500 tons of perfectly good items out of the landfill every day, according to www.freecycle.org.
Freecycle Network is considered a worldwide “gifting” movement that benefits communities while saving valuable resources. It is not a trading community and no money is ever accepted. The goal is for members to “give” the items they don’t want, without any strings attached or compensation. In Las Cruces, Carrie Hamblen, executive director of the Las Cruces Green Chamber of Commerce, has been an active member for more than two years, and avidly encourages Las Cruces residents to join.
Read more
