But anyway, she was telling me about Freecycle and I was like, 'well, I use craigslist to get cheap stuff' and she was like, 'no no, you get free stuff from people'. FREE?! Intrigued, I went to the site to track down my local group and immediately signed up. Mine happened to be in a yahoo group (not sure if they all are) so to make it easier on myself, I created a new yahoo group and new email address for strictly freecycle stuff, and then I set up that account on my phone and I got ready to start getting free stuff!
It's not as easy as all that I found out. Well, ok it's easy, but you don't just get whatever free stuff you want. Someone will send out an (approved) email and say "OFFER: george forman grill" or something along those lines. If I decide that I want that item I can reply and say "Hi, I would love the George forman, I can come pick it up tomorrow afternoon". So I replied and then I waited and waited and waited to hear back from this person. A half a day later I see an email from the group go out that says "TAKEN: george forman grill". And I'm all annoyed that I didn't get it (ha). So then I see another item that I want and I jump on the email as quick as possible and say I'd like it. Again.... I waited and waited, and then I saw a "Taken" email go out. BAH!
I thought I was doing something wrong, but then when I offered something free, I figured out REALLY how it works. When you are "offering" something, you may get tons of responses and then you get to choose one. Apparently, you don't reply to the others and say "sorry, I've chosen someone else".
I guess it's kind of like a lottery, but hey.. you can win big.
The other day I received a large garbage bag FULL of 2T/3T girl clothes. I scored the mother load. I got like 15 pairs of pants (only 2 of which were really "used"), 6 dresses including a fancy Christmas one, about 8 "play" t-shirts, a sweat and 2 sweatshirts, 3 skirts, a dozen used pajama tops, AND red sparkly shoes. For free. I mean, really... you can't beat that! They even left it on the porch for me to pick up at my leisure.I must say, I'm hooked! I highly recommend the Freecycle network.
