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Freecycle: the anti-eBay
It's addicting in much the same way eBay is addicting. But it's a lot better for me.
Here's the deal: You offer up your used-but-still-useful stuff to the community (via a Yahoo group). No trading, no selling, no strings attached. Everything is free. You connect with a taker, arrange a pickup, and voila! One woman's clutter is another woman's treasure.
People also post wanted listings, as in "WANTED: stale macaroni for children's art projects" or whatever. You could theoretically get rid of something you didn't even know you didn't need anymore. Which is beautiful! Although, like with eBay, I could see myself getting carried away. ("Hon, we didn't really neeeed the microwave... look at the space it freed up!")
I offered a ten-year-old (but still perfectly functional) vacuum cleaner and got seven responses within three hours. A folding grocery cart that I have used maybe once got nine responses in the same amount of time.
Dave used Freecycle to give away two huge boxes of completely reusable packing paper that we saved from our move but couldn't bear to throw away or recycle. When we got our new dining table, we listed our old college-era table and chairs and got a response that morning from a woman who was quite happy to take them.
And now all of these things have homes that want them. More importantly, they are no longer taking up space in our garage, nor are they in a landfill. These are things that wouldn't sell for much money. We could save them for our next garage sale, but again, we have to weigh the clutter factor (both the garage kind and the mental kind). We could try to sell them on craigslist, but have you ever looked at the furniture listings there? They go up so fast that you reload the page and there are 100 new listings every few minutes.
One of the last large items to go will be my first-ever road bike. It's an entry-level model with a heavy steel frame that's a size too big for me. It has been gathering dust for three years. I probably could sell it for a couple hundred bucks, but then I'd have to invest some energy and money in making it presentable. (If this seemed like a simple task I would have done it three years ago.) Instead I'm donating it to Trips for Kids, which runs a used bike shop. They can clean it up and sell it and I can take a tax deduction.
Got stuff you don't need taking up space? See if there's a Freecycle community in your area.
And for Bay Area folks, while we were moving I found this great list of local resources for reuse, recycling, reselling, decluttering and organizing.
The only thing I could never find a way to deal with is Styrofoam. Styrofoam is evil! It is very difficult to recycle, it takes up a ton of space, and it breaks up into those little staticky pills that cling to everything in sight. But dealing with Styrofoam is a battle for another day.
November 16, 2005 8:50 PM
Just because I was curious, I looked at the NYC freecycle group. It has this message in red text at the top -- BE AWARE BEFORE SUBSCRIBING: this group generates nearly 100 MESSAGES A DAY! Heh. Almost 19,000 members. That's a lot.
Jeez... maybe they should break the NYC group into sub-groups.
SF has 3400 members and generates 30-50 messages per day. But I don't get the emails; I just read the posts on Yahoo.
Since last night I have gotten two more responses for the cart and one more for the vacuum, despite the fact that I posted "TAKEN" messages.
This got me thinking that it would be very interesting to chart Freecycle group size against political leanings, median income, and internet access numbers.
It appears that the winner -- bigger than even NYC (population 8 million) -- is Portland (Oregon) with 20,000+ Freecycle members (population about 530,000; 1.7 million in metro area). Very interesting! And not at all surprising. Also, Austin, TX has 11,000+ Freecyclers (population 656,000; < 1 million in metro area) compared to Houston's 7,400 (population 2 million).
Totally unscientific, I know. But fascinating anyway.
Yeah, NY wins (well, almost) by virtue of size, but it doesn't surprise me at all that the percentage of participants is a lot smaller there. Craigslist took a lot longer to catch on there, too. The whole community mentality there doesn't work quite as well -- I'd be much warier buying used cds there, for example. I'd be curious to see the borough breakdown; my guess is that it's more from Brooklyn and Queens than Manhattan.
quick addendum -- Essex County, NJ, seat of Maplewood, South Orange, etc., has about 2500 members, which isn't tons (Maplewood alone has about 25,000 residents) but a decent number.
The Boulder Freecycle group recently broke ties with the national Freecycle group and have their own group (yeah, we Boulderites have to be different). Apparently the regulations they had to follow to be part of Freecycle were too stifling. So Recycle Boulder Valley has 3737 members for a city of about 90,000 or so. I also read posts at the Yahoogroup so I don't have to deal with email.
Personally I like to put my useless crap on my front lawn (weather permitting) with a big sign that says 'Free' so I don't have to deal with people. Or I take it to the local humane society which runs a thrift shop to raise money for the shelter. There's a wildlife rescue group that takes old clothes, towels etc. that are too grungy for resale. They use it for bedding for the animals.
Styrofoam is really fun if you have a cat who's obsessed with it and rips it to shreds before you realize what he's up to.
Elayne, this may sound weird, but I actually *like* the part of freecycling that involves dealing with people. It's not just about getting rid of the thing ... for me it's also important to know where it's going. And the little conversations you have with the other person are invariably pleasant.
Also you get this nice little feeling that you have, in your own small way, thumbed your nose at entropy.
I wonder if our local rescue groups would take old race t-shirts? We have enough bike rags to last us a century.