When I wrote about homesteading magazines in February, several people praised Countryside as the best of the bunch. Intrigued, I subscribed. I’ve received my first issue and I have to say: I’m impressed.
Countryside isn’t for everyone. It’s very much geared toward those interested in getting “back to the land”. When I read the magazine, I couldn’t help but think of my father. He loved this sort of thing. But even though I live in suburbia, there was still plenty of interest for me, as well.
Every month, Countryside features an enormous section of reader feedback, for example. People write in to tell their stories and to share tips and tricks about living in the country. It’s like a great blog conversation in print. This month, a letter from Khaiti Kahleck of Wisconsin introduced me to the concept of SwapLucks:
I want to share an idea with readers, as we are all facing pretty freaky economic times. I know folks who knit, but don’t can food, or make soap or go fishing or have a huge garden, etc. Many of us have skills or abilities to share, so we get together about once a month and have a “Swap-Luck”, where we all bring something we’ve made, grown, grown out of, or a skill to trade with each other. These are so fun!
Our group is slowly growing to include others now too. The last one had a dozen folks with pizza dough, goat milk, habanero peppers, fresh granola, kimchi, wine, soup — there’s something for everyone! I’d highly encourage others to try this; it really encourages you to try new things, make creative foods or products, and doesn’t involve money. And it builds community as well.
I think it’s clever to extend the potluck concept beyond food, but I was unsure how it would work in practice. I wished Khaiti’s letter to Countryside contained more information, so I tracked her down and sent her e-mail. “I’m curious about the mechanics of a SwapLuck,” I wrote. “How do they work?” Khaiti replied to describe the concept in greater detail:
Our SwapLuck group has over twenty folks who come and go, but started with a handful of friends. Friends tell friends, and so it goes. We get together about every two weeks. Last summer I read this fantastic book called The Revolution Will not be Microwaved, by Sandor Katz. He described these underground groups who get together and trade things that may be your specialty, but the financial overhead and burden to do what you love for a living (and up to code) is nearly impossible. But you love to do it anyhow.
So we got a group of interested folks together and started. In our group we have:
- bread bakers
- kimchi fermenters
- potters
- a seamstress
- gardeners
- backyard egg-producers
- home brewers
- goat milkers
- peanut sauce makers
- different dessert and cookie makers
- a masseuse
- cool junk collectors
There’s all kinds of stuff! We all bring as much as we want to trade — no limit or restrictions. And if people like what you make or have brought, they swap with you (as long as you have something they want.) We all have our specialties, and the group is ever-evolving. People try new things all the time. That was part of the incentive, so we’d all be inspired to try making new things, knowing we had a ready audience.
Over the winter, we met at a local bakery/coffee shop. Now that summer is coming, we’ll return to meeting at people’s homes. It is amazing at how business-like we are about it. Sometimes it’s like a party afterwards, but the swapping comes first. At each swap we always decide as a group when and where the next is. That way the communication doesn’t have to be on one person’s shoulders. We are mostly all on Facebook, so if someone misses one, it is easy to find out where the next one is.
Our typical swap would be at 5:30pm. We wait til 6pm, then one-by-one we go around and describe what we have brought. Then after everyone has their time, swapping begins. It is first-come first-serve, but second swaps are not unheard of! By 7pm we are usually done swapping. The one rule is “pre”-swapping is not allowed — like you see something good, you can’t interrupt and say “I want that and I have this to swap!” That is our only basic etiquette rule. Swaps on “futures” happen all the time. Maybe you only have one batch of cookies, say, but you could promise a fresh batch to trade. This is all based on trust, and we have found it has built an incredible community as well.
I’d say the hardest thing to swap is services — and I am not sure how many of them have been swapped. The people offering services put it out there, but I am not sure if much has happened outside of the swap.
Have you ever done anything like this? If so, how did it work? More to the point, would you ever do anything like this? As I said, I love the idea. I’d love to participate in something similar here in Portland. I could swap writing services or blog consulting! (Those are sure to be in high demand, right?)
On a semi-related note, check out this article from Yahoo! Green about how swapping is shopping for the new economy. That’s overstating things, of course, but I’ve heard of a lot more people swapping lately.
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Neat concept!!! Thanks for sharing!!
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Sounds similar to bartering, which I love to do. I would be interested if I knew of a group like this. I think it’s an excellent idea.
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Getting rich is about using your time effectively, among other things. That is why hobbyist bartering or self-sufficient gardening will not make you rich, not even slowly.
However, people starting to get out of debt might benefit – if nothing else, compulsive spending isn’t possible during no-money-activities.
And, this kind of things can help (re)discover the joy and meaning of life regardless of money. Essentially: get happy, not rich.
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What an excellent idea. This takes yard sales to a new level. Sort of MeetUp.com meets FreeCycling.com.
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I see how something like this could be fun to do, but mostly for the social interaction. If I wanted almost anything on that list, we have a farmer’s market here in town every thursday afternoon where I could get it.
The cash I’d spend on fresh baked bread at the farmer’s market really isn’t very much, and I’d earn it a lot faster by just doing my regular job as a software engineer than I would by taking up beer brewing (for example) as a hobby.
If I already brewed beer for the fun of it, and had tons of extra beer sitting around, then I could see this being a good way to get rid of it. Getting into any hobby like this to save money is a lot less efficient than just doing a few hours of freelance work, or taking on a second part-time job. After all, I’d still have to pay for the beer-making supplies.
Sure, you could trade for the beer-making supplies, too, but the more people you interact with, the harder it is to arrange the trades for physical goods, so pretty soon you get to the point that other early economies did where you need a currency to represent goods and services. We’ve already got a perfectly decent currency to use, and it’s got a lot more goods and services available with it than I do with a local barter system.
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I think it’s cool that this works for Khaiti’s group. I wonder how it would scale up for mine. Where I live in the Boston area, we pretty regularly have:
Soup Swaps
Recipe Swaps (like a soup swap, but for any vegetarian entree)
Clothing Swaps
Toy Swaps
…as well as several e-mail lists where people can do ongoing trades of stuff they no longer need (Freecycle, Boston Reuse, etc.)
What all those events have in common is that there’s some constraint on what gets swapped. I’m curious enough about doing a Makers Swap of handmade items that I’ll probably try it, but the breadth of available stuff makes me think it could be hard to organize.
Swaps are a huge part of my personal economy. I get paid in barter for much of my daily work as a homeschool coop teacher. We have a stash of frozen food our friends and neighbors have swapped with us that we can pull out on nights when we don’t feel like cooking, which replaces the need for take-out dinners. Likewise, I rarely buy clothes, even at thrift stores, because I can swap for just about everything my family needs.
Swaps don’t have to be an inefficient use of time. It’s just easy to make six quarts of soup as it is to make one, and simple enough to take a bag of clothes to a friend’s house to swap for new stuff.
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Great post!
Countryside (which I also get, oddly enough) and ideas like a “Swap-Luck” are a great example of the fight against lifestyle inflation.
The point is to spend less money and get more pleasure from your expenditures (and life!).
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I guess the question as to whether or not this kind of thing can make you rich depends a lot on how you define rich. If you only define it in terms of dollars, then this probably isn’t going to help you much. But if you define rich in terms if things like belonging to a community and the gratification that one gets when making things oneself, then this is an excellent idea. It seems like some of the previous comments are focused on the money definition. I use swapping/bartering quite a bit in my life, and it turns out that it can also have a pretty good financial outcome.
I think it’s important to remember the value that can come from the sense of community that results from this alternative economic system. And remember, too: not everyone makes as much as a software engineer. I have a good friend who has built a business from word of mouth advertising. All of her clients began in bartering deals. When the demand for her services outstripped what they had to offer, they began to pay cash as well (she still swaps when she can). When bartering/swapping, the “items” traded are just another form of currency, only their “cash value” is more easily negotiable.
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I have never done anything like that, but I would!
I can knit, and tutor French. However, doing it for the money can be tricky. Knitting takes a lot of time, and the price people offer to pay would translate to a few cents per hour of work. Tutoring and translating are usually in demand, but you’d be surprised how many people get shocked or upset when they realise you’re expecting to be paid for your work.
Exchanging knowledge for knowledge would be, I think, the best trade. It’s giving something without losing it. Then you have trading goods, which is good as well since I do like to knit, but there are many things I can’t do… sew, for instance.
This being said, I’d rather teach a friend to knit and have them teach me to sew than trade our final products with each other. But with some things, you might not have the time or equipment, so it’s definitely a good idea.
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If we look at it as a way of sharing, it’s marvelous.
If you are making these things anyway, because you love it, and wish to see them in a good home, how wonderful. We can knit or brew or bake as much as we want, and get things we cannot do in exchange.
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Hmmm, seems interesting.
I can immediately see that in most cases, it’s not really about the money.
For someone who has makes item X and has more than they need, it is about saving time and reducing some expenses.
For someone who has makes item X and has more than they need but is otherwise unemployed or in reduced circumstances, this can be a life saver.
Nothing here will make you rich financially, but it will make one feel further from the edge, reduce anxiety, open new avenues of experience (“I never tried X, but since so-and-so has it, I think I’ll try it…”). And the social and societal aspects are tremendous.
I wonder how ‘value’ is determined? Is one jar of kimchi worth one or two jars of peanut sauce? Is one massage worth four or two gallons of milk? If one person makes, say, kimchi and sells it sometimes, they have a conception of value; whereas if the peanut sauce maker never sold it, how do they determine what is “fair” value?
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I know a group of young people (college kids through 30-somethings) who do this about once a week. It’s actually a group that gathers for dinner, a very laid back Bible-study sort of thing, and yoga, but they’ve included a swap as part of it – everyone brings stuff they no longer want and puts it on a table. Anyone can glance through the stuff throughout the evening, and at the end of the night, when people leave they take what they want with them. It’s not technically a swap, though – its more like giving stuff away. If no one takes what you have brought, you have to take it back home with you (so that the hosts don’t end up with a bunch of extra stuff they can’t use). It’s not a one-for-one trade, more of a “this is stuff I’m willing to give up, and if I see something I want then I’ll take it.” I’ve only been once, and didn’t participate in the swap. But someone brought an old version of Guitar Hero they no longer use, and one of the couples who have children picked it up for their kids. How cool is that?
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JD – Have you heard of Brightneighbor.com? It’s Portland based, and does something similar online. You list what you want and what you can offer, and people can look and contact you to make the swap. Obviously the face-to-face contact is a wonderful addition, but this is a great place to start, especially if not everyone can meet up on the same night.
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OK, I’ve been intending to email you about this for a while, JD. This is an ideal segue!
I am a member of a co-op here in Portland called the Sunnyside Swap Shop and Indoor Playspace. It’s an indoor playground for parents and their children to gather and play, but it is also a swap shop at heart. Members can bring in clothing, books, and toys that their children have outgrown and swap for new items. It is the ultimate form of recycling! The founder was inspired to start the co-op when she realized that all the parents she knew were spending lots of time alone with their kids and surrounded by an identical set of stuff. She thought, “why not reverse the situation and create a place where parents can connect with one another as a community and SHARE all that stuff?” I have been a member for over a year now and I just love it. It really cuts down on the cost of kid’s clothing to have a huge bin of quality swapped clothes right there. Also, we frequently swap toys so my daughter gets new and exciting things without the combined burden of cost and clutter at home. The Swap Shop has lots of meet-ups like a baby music hour and and family music night, where local musicians play live music on Saturday nights for our member families (no charge!) with the understanding that kids (and their noise) will be in the audience. A member recently opened up another Swap Shop in St. Johns (Swap-n-Play).
Our members form a wonderful community. Anyone who is interested can visit the Sunnyside Swap Shop website at http://www.sunnysideswapshop.org/wp/ The St. John’s Swap-n-Play website is http://swapnplay.wordpress.com/.
I love the idea of specific skill-swapping! We might have to incorporate that….
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Will Wright > Oh, I almost forgot, we have a French similar one!
When you have something to offer, you put it for grabs, and you link to your profile. You profile lists things that you are looking for or could be interested in.
A friend works at a museum and can get free tickets every month. She trades them every time.
Many people on that website ask for food (1kg of rice for instance) because they’re students and broke.
In exchange for free tickets to the museum where she works, my friend has had earrings, a food bowl for her rabbit, I think a book and some other such things. It doesn’t cost her a thing and she gets something in exchange, it’s definitely a nice way to do it. And in her case, since she trades the same thing every month, a small face-to-face group probably wouldn’t cut it.
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Interesting concept! Would provide a benefit beyond the actual swap– a social event!
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DH and I do something similar, though much more informally. We trade time and such with some friends. For example I cook for a friend of his who is divorced and he comes over and helps DH with larger jobs that take more than one person. In fact DH has a number of single friends I can trade food for time.
So much of it is about changing your frame of mind. DH always considers what we do for others as being neighborly, but what others do for us as favors. But you can trade time and expertise and both be better off. As others have said it won’t make you rich, but very few things will in and of themselves. Thrift is a state of mind, and be it cooking at home, buying second hand, or doing a SwapLuck, it is a method of consumption that focuses on saving money.
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This is a great money saver because so much of starting a frugal habit is the start-up costs. (For example, if I hadn’t inherited canning supplies from my mom, I’d be reluctant to shell out for all new stuff.) If everyone bears the cost of the supplies for one process, you’re really saving a ton.
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Up here in Canada, this would be considered a barter group and the government likes to get their taxes on the exchanges even if no money changes hands. Unless you want to take your chances at doing this underground, you can join a barter exchange group in your area (check the phone listings). They usually allow one person for each specialty in each group (ie. one florist, one real estate agent, one seamstress, one bookkeeper, one handyman, etc.) and then they have a form where you log your trades by ‘selling’ your product/service for the same number of ‘barter’ dollars that it would sell for in real dollars to anyone else and then you build up an account of barter dollars to ‘buy’ products/services from other members with. The organization then takes care of calculating the taxes owed and you get a monthly bill for the taxes you owe on your trades, but you didn’t have to pay for the stuff/services you got so you still save a pile of money!
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FWIW – Bartering is taxable in the United States, too. IRS link:
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=187904,00.html
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I love the concept and I am going to try to do something like this with my buying club, and neighbors. I think our summer block party would be a perfect time to do this. In the mean time, my friends and I have started a database of skills that we have to share on our Yahoo buying club group, in SE.
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@JD: She didn’t mention how they determine order of trade? do they go one by one, or is it then a free for all (ala PIT)?
In addition: Please remember that these are things you have to pay taxes on. Services/goods/whatever. If you didn’t make it yourself, it counts as something you “paid” for, and thus must pay taxes on (local codes may differ)… Just like you pay local sales tax on items you buy online, right? RIGHT?
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I’ve attempted to be a part of 2 barter groups in my county, and neither of them was successful for me. I don’t know if it’s because I offer mostly services, or if it’s because the groups both focused on value equivalency (in other words, you tried to barter based on the monetary value.) That’s not for me. I barter more based on who-needs-what. A loaf of bread might be really valuable to an unemployed photographer, for instance, so maybe I’d photograph a house or a wedding in exchange for a few loaves of bread.
Apparently, my neighbors were just really fixated on monetary value equivalency. I gave up, but I’m always willing to barter with people.
Jen M.
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We are going to try this on May 16th in SE Portland. From 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM We are inviting people to bring whatever they have to trade for other goods or services.
SE 97th and Boise st.
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great to see all the feedback and stirring this has caused JD! I hope others all work this out to their own advatcage. It is certainly NOT a way to get rich, moneywise, it is a concept to en-RICH your life, as well as provide you with some inspiration/incentive to make those things you are good at! And it IS social as well, nothing wrong with that. Sounds like for the folks who have tried this before and got stuck with a bunch of money-fixated folks, try again with more likeminded people and be open and honest about what you want in a group as it get started. Open communication is pretty important, as is flexibility.
Someone asked about the order of presenting: when we each present, it goes around the table or circle, one by one, then after all are done show and telling, it is a free for all. Usually really civilized, but fairly rowdy. There is a politeness, but a get down to business way about our group. Good luck everybody!
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