Need stuff free? Like a mattress or a lamp or toddler clothes? Would you believe people would be happy if you took theirs? Freecycle.
Thinking of moving to a bigger house so you don't keep tripping over that extra mattress, lamp, and toddler clothes that you can't just throw away? Freecycle.
What's Freecycle? How can you find suckers who'll take your banty rooster that your hens won't have anything to do with or find outfits for your newborn that somebody else's teenager outgrew?
What can you do with all that stuff you have that's too good to throw away? You know what I mean, those New Balances that didn't fit and you didn't get around to taking them back to the store, that Health-O-Meter seat scale and the crutches you acquired when you had the bum leg a couple of years back, the home barbering kit you nearly cut off somebody's ear with, the ceiling fixtures you replaced because they didn't take fluorescent bulbs? That's all stuff I gave away to somebody who actually wanted the junk-to-me I was tripping over. That's not mentioning the organ---the organ like a piano, not the organ like a liver---I passed on via Freecycle for a relative.
The underlying primary purpose of Freecycle is keeping stuff out of landfills. Every washing machine you give away or recliner you take is another cubic yard of stuff kept out of a landfill. Freecycle also stretches budgets for people who can't otherwise afford the toys their kids want or the furniture for a new addition to their household. And it develops community; I've met a lot of nice and/or interesting people (sometimes only a couple of blocks away) and nobody truly dreadful, some of them obviously just barely scraping by and others just as obviously leading privileged lifestyles. Personally, I like rubbing elbows like that.
Worldwide, there are more than 2 million participants in 3,709 Freecycle e-communities, surely at least one of them near you. At http://www.freecycle.org/... you can sign on to lists of people near you.
All you do to get rid of that 6-foot-wide plush toy octopus (yes, I've seen that offer) is post a message to the list describing the thing, including its condition. The subject line should read: OFFER: big octopus stuffed toy, [location]. You give your location because most everybody, including you, will drive to Hillview if that's the town you live in but not 20 miles to Riverview unless it's an item you really, really want and need that will cost you a bundle at your local corner store.
That brings up the problem of wasting ever-more-expensive gas and adding more crud to our polluted air. When gas prices were rising steadily last year, and still I saw Freecycle members giving and receiving modest goods like two pairs of size 6 girls' shorts or a spice rack, I asked an e-list I moderate about the economics of it all. One listmate noted that in many suburban-exurban areas, all time not spent in the work cubicle or sleeping is spent driving around in circles, and the question wouldn't arise.
Another described a complicated setup, with people picking up stuff for somebody else at the Sector A pickup point and dropping it off at the Sector C pickup point, where they're picking up something left for them by somebody in Sector F. She ends with "Don't forget about the energy being saved at the manufacturing end if many families are getting sequential use out of strollers and video games."
Not to say my neighbors are stupid, but I can't visualize this functioning successfully in my neck of the woods. Overall, my best advice is to use Freecycle as nearby as possible and to batch errands, as in pick up your Freecycle shower curtains after you stop off at the post office on your way to the dentist's.
The danger of Freecycle is the likelihood that you'll wind up with more not exactly vital stuff than you started with. Did I really need that console tube record player that some guy's grandmother was getting rid of? Can I justify filling a bookcase with medieval history books someone didn't want to load on a moving van? (Well, she did say "a box," which I was picturing as six or eight books, and that bookcase used to hold an encyclopedia I passed on via Freecycle, so I didn't have to acquire yet another bookcase.) At least it's different stuff to dust twice a year.
In my ongoing Freecycle life, "a stranger" picked up my prom gown, which my parents had been saving for me, against my will, for a couple of decades. I don't have to contribute all those crinolines to a landfill; she doesn't have to buy or sew from scratch a new costume for her daughter's school play.
I told a neighbor about Freecycle. "A stranger" then picked up pavers he had left over from a landscaping project. He says 29 other people would have liked to have his leftovers, and he doesn't have to pile the pavers in his backyard for eternity or haul them to the dump.
Two weeks ago, I picked up a carton of old record albums for my husband the collector. It was farther away than I'd usually go for a Freelance pickup, but I had to go there anyway in connection with a town bicentennial commemorative book I'm helping to create.
Last weekend, I passed on an extra printer from our consolidation of households, a perfectly good monitor made junk-to-me by my birthday present of a flatscreen, three miniblinds that didn't fit our windows, and a huge deck glider left by the previous owners of this house, after we realized we'd never get around to replacing the missing awning and making it usable.
I'd love to hear your stories about Freecycle or your questions.
Update of http://badattitudes.com/... April 2006.