Online exchange offers free goods
Posted on Wednesday, December 26, 2007
When the electric blanket and hamster supplies flashed onto her screen, Christine Coburn pounced, claiming the goods from a donor known as Howlingmoon Wolvespirit.
Other freebies the Siloam Springs nurse, 39, and her husband, Chuck, have snapped up from online donors include an activity table they gave their son for Christmas and a Labrador-St. Bernard puppy that now weighs 65 pounds and is still growing.
The Coburns have unloaded some of their own clutter in the same way, including scores of the guppies that multiply constantly in their 55-gallon aquarium, bags of old clothes and a videocassette recorder with a tape stuck inside.
Freecycle is an online exchange designed to keep castoffs out of landfills. With about 5, 000 members in Northwest Arkansas, it has become a popular way to sweep out the old to make room for the new.
Craigslist and other sites offer online classified ads that can include items for barter or even give-aways, but that market is not exclusively for free exchanges like the environmentally motivated Freecycle network.
Freecycle is not a charity, and donors can’t take a tax deduction for the items they donate. It is a lively online market — without the money. People come looking for a wide range of items. Recent “wanted” notices sought items ranging from an artificial leg to a wolf pup. Donors, meanwhile, were offering toys for Christmas, frayed plastic Christmas trees and ornaments, and other goods.
Any takers for an Osmond Christmas album ? How about eight parakeets and a cage, or a hot-pink club wig ?
The offers pop up steadily. Email alerts are available.
Wanted: dragon items, said one recent posting. Another offered a matching couch, love seat and chair for pickup in Prairie Grove.
It’s possible to become addicted to this, acknowledged Coburn. She said her husband is one who tends to obsess.
For the hyper-vigilant, there is the occasional chance at a rare find.
“A 1901 piano popped up that was in perfectly good condition,” Coburn said. “We e-mailed immediately — like, within five minutes of the post. And it was already gone.” According to the Web site Freecycle. org, Arkansas has 39 local groups. They total 19, 870 registered members, enough people to fill Bud Walton Arena. Worldwide, Freecycle counts 4. 2 million members.
The Northwest Arkansas network, based in Washington County, is the state’s second-largest Freecycle group with 3, 286, behind the Little Rock group’s 4, 372. Benton County also has one, but it’s newer and has fewer members.
Through noon Friday, the Washington County group had logged 994 messages this month, a third more than in December 2006.
Nikki Womack, 31, of Fayetteville, who accounted for several of the December postings, calls herself a “single, recently disabled mom.” “I had to move back home with my parents,” she said. “Between my junk and their junk, it just kind of sat in storage. So we just started through stuff.” The overflow included three sets of dishes, clothes of the wrong size and glassware.
She gave it away on Freecycle.
“I haven’t been on there very long,” said Womack, who also has made donations to City Hospital in Fayetteville. “I was just looking for ways to recycle things.” On a recent offer for a batch of flip-lid plastic bottles, she emphasized a bit of Freecycle etiquette: “Please don’t grab just to grab. I’d like these to go to someone that hikes, camps and does ‘outdoorsy’ things.” Nonetheless, Womack and other regular users said they are certain some people claim items simply to resell them, not because they really need them.
The moderator of the Washington County group could not be reached for comment, but to Womack, reselling violates the spirit of Freecycle.
“I’m not on there to make money off other people,” she said. “I live kind of a poor little life myself, so I don’t want others to make money.” Some donors screen the emailers who respond instead of selecting the first, hoping to weed out resellers. But giver beware: There may be no way to know for sure whether the poster seeking a pricey donation really is a Christian missionary.
Sue Schroeder of Springdale said she also was skeptical of the motives behind some of the people claiming items. “But then I found out that several of the folks who responded to my posts were actually searching for items for other families who needed them but didn’t have the ability to access Freecycle,” said stay-athome mother, 44.
She frequently finds she has too much of something. “It’s that pack-rat thing: ‘I might need that one day.’ Yeah, right.” She has given away an inflatable pool with ladder and air pump, furniture, clothes, school supplies and toys, she said.
“What good is it doing you by hanging on to it ? Nothing. You just have to keep moving stuff to clean around it.
“ It is extremely rewarding to know that someone can use these things and they go directly to these folks rather than to warehouses at thrift shops,” she said.
A Cub Scout pack leader, Schroeder said she twice posted “wanted” ads seeking uniforms for boys in the pack. She found donors both times.
At the moment, Womack is in the Freecycle market hoping to pick up dachshund items and a carrion plant for herself — thus far with no offers.
“The only luck I’ve had,” she said, “was there was this really cool lady, and she gave me a lot of SpongeBob stuff.”
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