I had heard about Freecycle some time ago, but there didn’t seem to be an active local group. A few days ago, I checked again, and found that the Freecycle yahoogroup for our area had grown to 800 members.
Freecycle started as a way to exchange goods that were no longer wanted and keep them out of landfills. In our abundant society, people frequently discard things that are still useful, or would be to someone else. I take a lot of our discards to Goodwill, but I didn’t think Goodwill would welcome a short cord of firewood.
Since we hadn’t used our wood stove for several years, and finally sold it last summer, we didn’t need the firewood. Worse still, the firewood was stacked along our dog run fence, and two of the local dogs had discovered that it made a perfect ramp allowing them to jump in and join our dogs, which also gave them access through a dog door to the mudroom. (This was especially annoying since these dogs were chewers, and we didn’t have the mud room policed for dogs that chew. I try to keep the chemicals in the mud room secure, but don’t normally have to worry about the rest of the room.) We put up some mesh to keep the dogs off the wood, which worked but made the area even more of an eyesore. I had thought about putting a sign offering the firewood out on our road, but hadn’t gotten around to it.
Freecycle asks that your first post to the list be an offer, so I offered the firewood on Wednesday afternoon. I had over ten responses in twenty minutes. After a little correspondence with the first responder, I had arranged for her to come and pick up the firewood on Thursday afternoon. She and her two children arrived promptly at the arranged time, and it took us less than an hour to load the wood into her cargo van. I had no idea you could fit so much into one of those big vans.
Freecycle accepts posts about almost any legal item except for firearms, alcohol and tobacco. You are also allowed to post an occasional “wanted” item, and the one that amused me most was someone requesting a size 10 blue evening gown. The request was fulfilled the same day.
