Freecycle Zen

I’ve been hanging out on the Birmingham (not Alabama) Freecycle group for a couple of weeks now and it’s been fascinating watching what get offered. Here’s a selection of things people were going to throw away but decided to offer to the world first:

Mini hover mower
Mothercare Baby Bouncer seat
Hiking, walking and Men’s Health magazines
Bathroom suites (yes, plural)
Professional punch bag
High quality 35mm camera
Jaz external disk drive with 6x 1GB removeable disks
Psion 5 handheld computer
Various bike parts
Free range rabbit (“dead but fresh”)
Electric Juicer
Acoustic guitar
Ring binders
Wharfdale speakers
Pine cot and mattress
Pine bedroom furniture
Joystick
Dozens of size 8 shoes
Dog guard for a Citreon ZX car
30 Quarry tiles
Typewriter
JVC hi-fi stack system with speakers
photo developing equipment
phone
Single bed
TDK Palm-to-Ericsson connection kit
Scanner
Two pairs of jeans that husband is now too skinny for, originally cost £4

A couple of things I’ve been interested in have gone really quickly. Most things get snapped up within an hour of being posted (except the typewriter for some reason) so while it might not be ideal for getting hold of specific things (if you want it you can guarantee others will too) Freecycle looks to be a keen way of getting rid of stuff fast.

Folk can also post Wants to the list though unreasonable requests are frowned upon. Some of the more interesting ones I’ve seen with tantalising tastes of backstory:

Really old garish carpet (“size wise i need enough to wrap a body in! please believe me, i’m actually not a psycho, my friend is…making a film…wait… oh this goes from bad to worse…”)
Solar-powered / wind-up radio (“I’m going camping to the Lakes in a few weeks time, and it dawned on me that I was going to miss out on my favourite past-time — listening to the radio!”)
Weights (“vinyl or iron”)
Wrecking bar (“I need a large crowbar, called, I believe, a wrecking bar. Does anyone have one occupying valuable shed space, which they don’t use, please?”)
Paving slabs any amount and hardcore (“Having had great success in finding greenhouses/glass and a trailer I could now use some slabs and hardcore to make a base for my large greenhouse on my “goodlife” allotment. Any quantity considered”)
Show window dummy (“485 squadron Air cadets (Harborne) are looking for a dummy to use for training new cadets the “art” of keeping their uniform in good condition.”)
Toilet (white) (“A friend is after a white porcelain toilet to replace her old one which she broke recently by dropping something on it.”)
Composted Manure (“Our garden soil is the pits, the builders have ruined what was once fertile farmland. We live in CV7 and can collect.”)
Terracotta pot feet (“kicking around…”)
Bird cage for Cockatiel (“Its just a male on its own called Billy however we are moving and he’s currently in a home made box after being moved back into the house from an avery in the garden.”)
Engineering bricks (“It is a little known fact that every house has a small pile of bricks in the garden. There is no reason to presume that any two piles of bricks are going to be identical this means that someone, somewhere will have a pile of approximately 150 clean engineering bricks. If this is you, and you live within about a 20-30 mile radius of Redditch then I’d like to hear from you”)
Blankets, towels, dog bed (“Just rescued a Border Collie from Birmingham Dogs home. Could do with more old towels for wet days, and also blankets for back of car/kennel/bed”)

I hope I’ve demonstrated why Freecycle is such an international success story. Yes you’re helping others and reducing reliance on landfills by redistributing unwanted things around the community and that gives the requisite warm glow, but just watching the Offers and Wants stream through is endlessly entertaining. I fear I may get hooked and subscribe to Freecycle lists in areas I don’t even live in…