Thursday, August 12, 2010

Finding what works, Freecycling the rest



I love organizing supplies. Truly do.

Here's the problem. Some of them don't fit my needs once I've got them in my house. Take the four examples above:

The tower of translucent bins in the black frame looks cool. But I found items went in the drawers and never came out. Hopefully it works for the person I'm giving it to (hooray for Freecycle).

The blue bins were great for storing big stuff (e.g., piles of toys and clothes) back when I had a little kid. But that was almost two decades ago.

The white bins were my mother's - she used them for art supplies. But I found things went in and never came out. Wouldn't have been so bad, but the bins weren't the same size as any of my other storage solutions.

I originally bought the 10 gallon grey bins thinking I would use them in sorting through my stuff. Alas, they are too big for me to use effectively for the intended purpose.

Speaking of solutions that fit my life - I like Freecycle. I've found eBay is too hard for anything but truly valuable stuff. I don't like the Craig's List format. And with my work schedule, dropping stuff off at donation centers is sometimes problematic.

Freecycle is locally oriented, is explicitly oriented towards keeping things out of landfills, and I don't have to haul my stuff somewhere to get rid of it (the folks who want the stuff come to me). Both giver and taker are happy.

Once we got a fridge via Freecycle. I felt bad as I drove away - it didn't seem right to get a full-up fridge for free. Then I caught a glimpse of the guys who'd given the fridge away jumping in the air and giving each other high fives. I didn't feel bad about taking the fridge after that, after seeing their joy in having the fridge gone.

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