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!

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.

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?

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=187904,00.html

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.

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.

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….

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!).

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.

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.

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.