Doing Some Spring Cleaning?
Fred and I have accumulated a lot of extra “stuff.” Since combining our single lifestyles in the past 2 years and replacing those things with better quality items (like better pots and pans!), we have a LOT of extra stuff. On another website I follow, a while back I learned about “Freecycle.” It’s a website/online community created to help people give away (or find) items they don’t need anymore (or do need) for free:
“Freecycle is a website that helps connect people in their own neighborhoods with folks who want stuff and folks who want to give stuff away. And that simple concept has had some surprising side effects, like strengthening community relationships while reducing the amount of waste that goes into landfills.”
-taken from “People of the Web: An Online Flea Market, Where Everything’s Free,” check it out, there’s a great video to go with the article.
There are Freecycle communities all over the country, which you can find here. I belong to the Akron Freecycle community, which can be found on the yahoo forums, here. People are always posting things they are looking to give away, from old musical instruments to plants to clothes. You can also make a request, or post about something you want. I’ve found, the easiest way to keep track of all the posts is to have them emailed to me in sets, so as not to flood my email inbox.
Recently, Fred and I gave an old working refrigerator we had gotten from a friend that we never used, to a family living without one, through Freecycle. Not only did it feel good to help someone else, we were able to free up some space in our basement without sending a working fridge to the landfill!
While we are planning on having a garage sale soon to get rid of some of our extra things, we still plan to use Freecycle to complete our “spring cleaning” this summer (yes, we are slightly behind!).
