I don't think I've mentioned how much I love Freecycle. First of all, I get rid of all kinds of goodies without having to leave my home. This is especially handy since we're unloading just about everything we own before we move to The Woods. The hard part is trying to determine whether something is worth the effort of trying to sell for a few bucks. This seems to be my monkey brain's favorite subject lately. I sit in the living room, inspect everything we own, one item at a time, and think:
1. Do I want to keep this? The answer is yes 99 percent of the time.
2. Do I want to pack it and haul it across the country? Usually a no.
3. Can I sell it? Maybe.
4. How much is it worth? No idea.
5. Should I look up the price of something similar on the internet? I don't have time right now.
6. Should I take a photo of it and post it on Craigslist? I don't have time right now.
7. Should I wait and sell it at our big yard/estate sale? Maybe
8. Should we have a yard or estate sale? Hmm. . . .
9. What is an estate sale? No idea
10. When will we have this sale? In the two minutes between when we don't need our stuff and when we leave.
11. Should I just Freecycle it all? Yep yep.
I try to think of my Freecycling as an act of selflessness rather than an act of laziness.
The problem is that there are all kinds of goodies people are giving away on Freecycle, and I can't turn them down. Sure, I'm only going to use this (scrap of carpet, twin mattress, dog cage) for the next four months, but it's free, free! Who can resist?
R can resist. Every time I show up with the new thing I've fetched, he gives me a look of disapproval, but he never mocks me, and that's why I love him.
Obo digs Freecycle, though. Whenever I say, "We've got some errands to run," Obo bounces in his seat a bit and asks, "Are we going to drive around and take stuff off of people's porches again?"
That's the part I think is really cool. Right now, all across the U.S., people have bags of used treasures on their porches-- sometimes marked with strangers' names on yellow sticky notes-- just waiting for some happy Freecycler to take them away.
Sometimes the treasures have stories that go along with them. One Freecycler told me that one of the jars in the set she was offering was missing because her husband used it to take in his sperm sample after his vasectomy. I didn't really want that one anyway.
And just today when I gave away my old red Earth shoes I couldn't resist telling the Freecycler who took them that I was wearing those shoes in Italy when my husband asked me to marry him.
"But we're moving across the country," I said. "I can't take everything with me."
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