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By Johnny, March 10, 2010 9:16 am

The other day when I was searching the web I stumbled upon this page: http://www.freecycle.org/. I suppose I was directed here due to the fact that I may have been looking for something bicycle related but I forget what was the beginning but the ending was a great discovery. Apparently Freecycle is an organized group of people who are giving and getting stuff from other people. The idea is to reuse items and keep them out of our landfills.

I then attempted to join one of these groups. I searched for a Freecycle group near my neighborhood and immediately found a Yahoo! Group for the city I’m living in and adjacent city. I signed up with this group just to see what was happening. Besides getting inundated with emails after emails explaining rules and what not to post, I finally got to see the message board. What I saw was listings of people making “OFFER” for stuff that they don’t need and are willing to give it away or people requesting goods in a form of a “WANTED” post or a note that what they had offered had been “TAKEN”.

As an experiment, I wanted to participate in this community. I had a used paella pan that was given to me but never used. I think my girlfriend thought we would be making paella but that never happened. It just became a nuisance moving in and out of the oven whenever we wanted to bake. I was ready to just donate it somewhere but never found the time. So this was a perfect item to offer to the mass population of Freecyclers. My first post was immediately denied. Apparently you had to put your location in the subject head. I reposted and didn’t check my account for a few hours after I had place the post. When I got back, my in-box had 16 messages all asking about the pan! I was shocked that it worked and that people really WANT a paella pan. I decided to give the pan out to the first to respond (response time 15 minute). Unfortunately, that person said she couldn’t pick up the pan until Monday. Since I was making the rules in giving my stuff away, I wanted it to be picked up that afternoon so I chose between 2 requester who said they can pick it up that day. The one I ended up with gave me a time frame which was very helpful.

Some people gave me very specific reasons why they needed one. Others were questioning what it looked like and how big it was. When I read all these messages, I was seeing very interesting behaviors. It felt good giving my paella pan away that day. The smile on the person’s face and gratefulness was awesome. You experience something similar to when you are volunteering for charity. Freecycle just gave me another option to do with stuff I don’t want. So if you have a closet full of crap that you don’t want but still works, why not Freecycle it? With for over 4,000 groups and 7 million members, you’re bound to find someone who might want it.