Don’t donate it if if you wouldn’t use it.

We believe in smart consumerism and reCommerce. We pay you for your used items and then resell them online to keep the items out of landfills. We were even one of 8 companies in South Carolina to receive 2011 S.C. Smart Business Recycling Program ‘Outstanding Waste Reduction & Recycling Program’ Award last month for our efforts!

We have some friends who live in a neighborhood that hosts a neighborhood-wide garage sale every June. They take it one step further by inviting their friends to bring things to their house. As a result, their sale is, by far, the biggest one in the neighborhood.

The key to making this work is organization. They have a clear list of how everyone needs to label their things, and everyone needs to spend some time helping out with the sale. But there is power in numbers. We can mark up everything we put in the sale by 20-30% and we always leave with almost nothing.

I never stop being amazed at how little value so many people (particularly those who post on PF blogs) place on their time. They will spend hours and hours of their life in order to save minuscule sums of cash. It borders on pathology.

But the greatest thing about freecycle is that you can sometimes end up interacting with people in your community that you wouldn’t have interacted with otherwise. Every interaction we’ve had via freecycle has been a positive experience. And we’ve kept a lot of stuff out of the landfill that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get rid of.

If you can’t sell your “useless” stuff you’re probably doing the equivalent of bringing a hot-dog cart to a vegan colony– you don’t know your market. For me, it’s fun to sell used things I no longer want–it’s an experiment in microeconomics and a way to get some cash for things that would otherwise go in the trash bin.

I sell used business equipment and house wares when I upgrade, I sell used clothes when I’m bored with them, I sell books I don’t want to keep any longer, I sell gifts that I have no use for, etc. There’s always someone who wants them and I always welcome the money, which can be had with minimal effort.

If you want to throw money away because you don’t understand supply and demand or because you can’t be bothered or because of opportunity cost or because you have better things to do on a weekend, then more power to you, but expecting that everybody do the same is quite silly, especially in a blog devoted to saving and investing money.

This has happened to me a few times. We mostly do Goodwill now, but here are a few ideas:

1. List a whole bunch of items at a time (for instance on Friday afternoon), allotting one Saturday to moving the stuff out. If it doesn’t get sold in your time window, pull the Craigslist ads and take it to Goodwill or whatever.

2. The first person to actually show up gets the item. A lot of people will call and ask you to hold stuff for them. Don’t do it.

I also never know what is going to be popular. I once had 8 people call for a set of windchimes that I was giving away. If I’d known that so many people were hot for windchimes, I would have sold them.

Well, and some hand-me-down stuff for clothing that is in good shape but doesn’t fit anyone. That happens with kids.

When we lived in a city, freecycle was the easiest way to get rid of stuff, but now goodwill is easiest.

The second time I was in a wedding, that expensive dress went to the Salvation Army along with my other clothes! My memories are what is important, not the dress or who ended up with it next.

Trying to find the perfect place/person to bestow your stuff on–it’s just another way to let stuff rule your life. Better just to let it go…!

My grandparents grew up during the depression and didn’t get rid of anything. There’s a big difference between getting rid of your kids’ useful items and dealing with items that were useful 50 or 60 years ago. (My grandparents were incredibly tidy, they just had a LOT of storage!)

After giving stuff away and estate sales, there was simply a lot of junk that wasn’t much use to anyone. If we’d had to worry about finding the ideal home for all of it rather than shipping it of to the dump and Goodwill, we’d still be dealing with it now.

Tyler’s right — sometimes you just have to get it done!

1) Take all the stuff you don’t use.
2) Throw it [somewhere else that makes you feel good].
3) Done.

Making a big deal out of all the possible different ways you could get rid of each item is a recipe for never finishing. You can throw 50 old t-shirts in the trash in 1 minute. You can take them to goodwill in 15 minutes. It will take you weeks or months to get rid of them trying to sell them or swap them with friends. You will never finish your task doing it that way, especially since you probably have a lot of other stuff besides t-shirts to get rid of.

I can take a whole trunkload of clothes to Goodwill or ARC and they will find buyers for nearly all of it. Four holey t-shirts is just trash at my house, but a baled semi load of them at the Goodwill plant is valuable cotton for making paper. My neighbors don’t want my 4th pair of red mary janes or the hideous nightgown Grandma gave me, but someone who wants them will find them at the thrift store.

When I had more free time, i shopped at Goodwill’s unsorted & rejected store. There are always people there buying clothes, shoes, and books to take back to Nigeria or Haiti or the Phillippines to give away or resell.