The Red, White, and Green

Summer is prime moving time, and cleaning out all those closets and storage before you pack up can feel pretty therapeutic. But moving can also be stressful, so there’s often an urge to get rid of all that old junk in the easiest way possible. Those who are motivated and sales-savvy can raise a buck or two by selling primo items on Craigslist, but what do you do about those things that no one will buy? 

Goodwill, of course, is always an option. But the last time I went to my local Goodwill and saw one lone worker trying to sort through mountains and mountains of unwanted junk, I had to wonder how much of it actually made it into the stores. Then I heard about Freecycle.

The Freecycle Network lets you find a home in your community for unwanted items that would otherwise end up in the landfill. It’s kind of like Craigslist, except that everything is by donation only. Now, I’m a Craigslist junkie — I seem to have the magic touch for determining precisely the right price point for items to sell like hot cakes — but even I was left with a few sad looking articles in my garage that refused to budge on Craigslist. 

When I listed them on my local Freecycle network, however, I was awed at the response. Here is a community of thrifty, resourceful people who are truly grateful for the treasures they find via the network! In one week, I managed to find homes for my broken vacuum cleaner, a rubber exercise ball, pillows I had made for my old couch, and 150 unused bubble mailers.

In the instances I didn’t want to or have the time to meet the recipients face to face, we simply agreed upon a time and place for me to leave the item. Unfortunately in the case of my vacuum cleaner, this resulted in someone else swiping it before the guy I found on Freecycle was able to pick it up. (Oh, well — at least someone is using it now.) But for everyone else, I felt like some sort of fairy godmother. One young lady wrote me a particularly compelling email about how the exercise ball would help her weight-loss efforts. 

I can’t help but feel that in some ways, the current recession is a good thing for the world at large, for it’s forcing people to recognize that we can no longer afford — both environmentally and economically — to live in a disposable society. In a land of plenty, why can’t one person’s trash always be another person’s treasure?

–Jennifer Grayson

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