on my way home from work this evening, i made an 18 mile detour and came home with a terrarium (reptile habitat, with screened top) as big as the whole hatchback area of my kia. the price of such a luxurious piece of lizard real estate, if purchased retail, would be roughly $100. the cost to me, was about $3 worth of gas.

Freecycle was founded in 2003 as a local group in Phoenix, and has grown into a force to be reckoned with:

The Freecycle concept has since spread to over 75 countries, where
there are thousands of local groups representing millions of
of members — people helping people and “changing the world one gift at
a time.” As a result, we are currently keeping over 300
tons a day out of landfills! This amounts to four times the height of
Mt. Everest in the past year alone, when stacked in garbage
trucks!

to participate, you simply sign up with a Yahoo e-group which asks that you follow a set of basic rules (see my local group’s “Freecycle Etiquette“) for posting, but leaves the rest up to the individual members. why should you Freecycle rather than give to a charity? certainly giving to a charity is less effort, especially if the charity picks up donations from your home. but to me, there is tremendous appeal to the idea of participating in a community where we help each other (especially in these tight financial times) by sharing things we don’t need, with others who do. i even think that if we made more of an effort to support each other as a community, there would be less need for charity. that sounds awfully pretentious though, doesn’t it? let’s just say that i enjoy free stuff almost as much as i love giving away free stuff to nice people, and leave it at that.

so if you think that Freecycling sounds like an awesome idea, i have some helpful tips, based on my experience using the local Freecycling network.

GIVING:
i see a lot of messages posted on Freecycle that are
vague and uninformative, as if the poster couldn’t be bothered to give
a detailed description, and i think this defeats at least some of the
purpose of Freecycling. the point is, to prevent things from going into
landfills, while helping other members of the community. if you don’t
make the effort to clearly describe what you are offering, the people
who respond are doing so without enough information to determine if
they really want this item or not. this means that the recipient must
spend the gas and time to go pick up this item, only to discover it
won’t be helpful to them after all; also, it’s possible that people who
respond to posts which offer very little information, are doing so
because they don’t intend the item for themselves, but for their next
garage sale — this does happen.

so what i recommend is that
if you are going to post an item, make sure you give a very detailed
description. i frequently post gadget accessories (bluetooth dongles,
memory cards that i’ve outgrown), and with items like that you have
people who think they want them just because they’re cool toys, yet
might not have any use for them at all. for instance, with the
bluetooth dongles, i gave very detailed technical information, and specified IN CAPITAL LETTERS that they ONLY worked
on WINDOWS XP or 2000. i furthermore went on to say IF YOU HAVE A MAC,
THESE WILL NOT WORK FOR YOU. the first email i got was a nice gentleman
who thought this would be ideal for his wife to be able to transfer
files from her cell phone to … you guessed it, her Mac.

Mr. Mac-Wife probably didn’t even read through the description — he
was the first response. i sometimes suspect that people who just fire
off a response right away might not even be interested in the item
personally, they just want to get free stuff to sell at a garage sale
or on Craig’s List. many Freecyclers will just give to the first
responder, but every time i’ve done it, i’ve regretted it later. since
my purpose in giving on Freecycle is that the item does someone some
good, i prefer to wait a few hours until i’ve got a good pool of
respondents, and i choose the one that gives me the best sense that
they have a need for the item. when i gave away a smaller MicroSD card,
i had many responses, but chose the one who needed it because her
daughter had just saved up to buy a camera, but hadn’t gotten a memory
card yet. i was rewarded by a nice thank you email from the girl, who
was thrilled to be able to take more pictures than her camera could
hold by itself.

RECEIVING:
when responding to items i would like to have, i do try to be as prompt
as possible but i always take the time to express my reasons for
needing the item, and to politely thank the Freecycler for their
consideration. in addition, i always state clearly when i can pick up
the item, and sign with my name, email, and phone number. by taking the
time to compose a thorough and thoughtful response, i might miss out on the folks
who automatically choose the first response, but overall i find it
gives me a better chance of being chosen. our adorable leopared gecko,
Humpfree, came from Freecycle, and the lady who gave him to us told me
that there were 50 responses and mine wasn’t even in the first 30 – but
she thought i’d be the best new home for her lizard (indeed, i was).

one last bit of advice, is about the email. if you are in an active Freecycle group, you will get at least several dozen (or more) emails per day. choosing the individual email option is the only way to keep on top of offers, since even the best response doesn’t do much good if you wait until the daily email digest to respond. what i recommend is that you set up a folder under your inbox, and set up an email rule to filter all messages with the name of the group (in my case, [VenturaFreecycle]) into that folder. i’ve heard of people giving up on Freecycle because of the email volume, but with a little bit of organization, it’s easy to deal with, and more than worth the effort.

so, to sum it up: Freecycle rocks. i have found good homes for items that had outlived their usefulness for me, and i have received many cool things, including most recently that spacious 50 gallon terrarium for my growing bearded dragon, Puff. things are tight, financially, and most of us can use all the help we can get — and if we can accomplish this as a community while keeping things out of landfills, so much the better.

to find your local Freecycle group, go here. happy Freecycling!