It always amazes me to see the things you find on Freecycle.  I’ve been a member for oh, I don’t know, a year or two, and I’ve seen things ranging from trash — literally — to fantastic electronics.  For instance, I got my printer there — a perfectly good printer that doesn’t have expensive ink OR go through it quickly, I might add.

As another example, I once saw someone actually giving away a portable hot tub on Freecycle.  It worked perfectly well — they just wanted to upgrade to a new and better one, and didn’t want to pay someone to haul the old one away.  So rather than buying a hot tub for sale, someone got very lucky and got one for no more than the price of gas (or buying someone a case of beer in exchange for the use of their truck).

See, the way Freecycle works, if you have something you want to get rid of you just list it via email, and it goes out to all members in the group.  If someone is interested, they email you back to make arrangements to pick it up.  You post another email when it’s promised, and a final email when it’s taken, so that everyone knows.

The beauty of it is that you don’t have to do anything other than send emails and put the item(s) on the front porch.  The taker comes and gets them, and you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

You can also request things on Freecycle, but the moderators generally encourage more offers than requests.  The idea of Freecycle is, after all, to recycle items (hence the name) and keep them out of the landfills for as long as possible.  It’s not a charity — it’s an effort to reduce waste in a highly wasteful society.

I highly recommend signing up with the Freecycle Yahoo! group in your area.  You never know what you’ll find that you might be able to use!

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