"Welcome! The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,967 groups with 8,604,854 members around the world. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by local volunteers (them's good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on 'Browse Groups' above the search box. Have fun!"
~ Introduction from freecycle.org
Sound like a cool thing to you? I joined freecycle about a month ago and wanted to try it out before sharing it with you. Basically, you search for your town or closest major populated area, and there are Yahoo Groups to join in each area. You'll need a google acc't, so I made one up and e-mailed myself the log-in info to my actual e-mail address. So far so good - I mean, free stuff is good, right? I wasn't afraid or discouraged to jump through about 10 minutes of hoops to get it. HOWEVER: Don't make the mistake I made, which was signing up in two areas and set my account to receive individual e-mails when someone posts something. In one day, I had over 700 e-mails to go through.
Can you imagine? So, I logged in to both groups that I had joined and changed my settings to NO E-MAIL. Now, when I am looking for something specific, say, perennials, go to the freecycle Yahoo Group pages and use the Search feature. Usually, people will post an item with a description in the subject line, and then post a message saying something like "TAKEN: description." This is helpful because you will see both posts when you search and know an item is gone. Act on anything you might want because things go VERY fast in the freecycle network.
Also, sometimes "Curb Alert" posting are found and they let you know that someone has put something out at the curb. These postings are tough unless you live VERY close by and can leave immediately to go check it out.
Keep in mind a few things: people are involved and some people are very bad, so never, NEVER go alone to pick up anything - that would be just a bad idea. Also, if you are search for something specific, be sure to come up with various search terms because not everyone calls every item the same thing. Example? Sofa vs. Couch. So take a moment to think of what else someone might call the item you seek.
You communicate with the person who has the item via e-mail. Everyone gives contact info in their post, so this is much easier than the all-too-often waiting games you have to play with listings on Craig's List who don't respond and do not remove listings when items are sold. I am in a waiting game right now for dining room chairs with a seller who 1. hasn't written back (and did not supply a phone number) and 2. has not removed the listing! Ugh.
People on freesysle have never made me wait for anything. They just want the item gone. Enjoy this free service, it is quite awesome! Check it out at freecycle.org
No comments:
Post a Comment