Do You "Freecycle"?

Posted by Jeremy in community, environment, frugality, simple living

I was first introduced to Freecycle about a year ago. I don't remember exactly how I stumbled upon the site, but was immediately drawn in by the prospect of looting other people's unwanted treasures.

It is a fairly simple concept. Create a forum for the average netizen to offer up their unwanted items to others in exchange for the opportunity to act upon the offers of others in the community. This helps the frugal find decent used goods, and keep those goods from filling up the landfills faster than they would otherwise.

The folks at Freecycle made it even easier to introduce people by creating Yahoo! Groups for each locality. You simply search for your city and state and it gives you possible local groups to join.

Once in, they ask that each new member offers something to the group prior to responding to other offers. In my case, I freecycled two car booster seats that my boys had grown out of to get my foot in the door. They were picked up within hours of posting them as available. I have also used Freecycle to find new homes for firewood, and even leopard geckos.

I decided to write on Freecycle for a couple of reasons. First, having just moved into a new place and not having a washer or dryer, we were getting very frustrated with hauling our laundry to one of our parents home and spending all day there to do laundry. Then a couple days ago, some benevolent freecycler, I'm sure they knew we were in need, offered a washer and propane-ready, gas dryer. They even knew we were on propane. Now, granted they aren't a matched pair, and I doubt, the dryer anyways, is Energy Star compliant. But this Freecycle success is saving us a 30 mile drive and a lot of time lost by having them here in our house.

Next on our Freecycle watchlist is an entertainment center, end tables and nightstands, and children's dressers. Wish me luck.