Freecycle track record

My plans to celebrate the Jewish new year by getting rid of a bunch of stuff on Freecycle have not been altogether successful. Of the six items I posted — a working cordless phone, bottles of potassium and magnesium supplements, two partly-used containers of skin-care products, and a set of cheap cloth face masks from Target that didn't fit either me or Brian properly — only one (the magnesium supplements) was actually taken. The phone and the skin-care products all got "Hey, I'm interested" messages, but when I replied to the senders attempting to arrange an actual pickup, they all ghosted me. (Note to any Freecycle members reading this post: Please don't do that.)

The good news is, I was able to find good homes for three of the other items through other means. After taking another look at the masks, I concluded that it would only take a few stitches and some knots in the ear loops to adjust them to a size that I could use. So I did that with both masks, and I now have two more close-fitting masks to add to my rotation. And I was able to dispose of two other items by dropping them off yesterday on my parents' table at their local town-wide yard sale, where they were offering up a bunch of free items that they had purged from their storage room in the wake of last month's flood. We left all our unclaimed stuff on this table, and before we'd even finished locking up our car, a woman had pulled up, snagged the two skin-care products, and departed again. (Sadly, the cordless phone and the potassium supplements had not found takers by the end of the day, but we did score a few good finds for ourselves at the sales — two shirts for me, a working set of headphones for Brian, a book for one of our nephews, a piece of scrap wood, a quartz crystal that's useless but decorative, and a little tool for rounding off the corners of pages — all for less than $10. So I'd call that a win-win.)

Anyway, today I was entering the results of these efforts on my Freecycle log, which I started keeping back in 2014 to keep track of items I'd posted on Freecycle and which ones had been taken. And it occurred to me that this document provided an interesting record of our successes and failures with Freecycle over the past six-plus years. I won't reproduce the entire list, but here's a summary of the most pertinent facts:

Since December 2014, we have offered 126 items up on Freecycle. Of those items, we successfully gave away 89 through the site, a success rate of about 70%. Most of these items were requested by only one or two people, but a few scored multiple requests. The most in-demand items were:

• A couple of Pyrex bowls (acquired as part of a set when we only needed the largest one), with seven requests
• A specialty cake pan for baking a cake in the shape of a train (scavenged from a freebie pile on a whim, and discarded after we learned my youngest nephew was no longer all that into trains), with six requests
  
• An antique pharmacy lamp that had belonged to Brian's grandfather, also with six requests
• We got four requests each for an IKEA table lamp, an indoor TV antenna, a set of cabinet organizer shelves, and my dad's old computer. Interestingly, my mom's computer, listed at the same time, got only two requests.

That leaves 37 items we could not find new homes for on Freecycle. We managed to give away 17 of these through other venues, mainly the Freecycle table at the Morristown Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, where the Troubadour concerts are held. This table, which sat outside the upstairs bathrooms, functioned as a miniature free store where people could drop off or pick up pretty much any small item, from books to coffee mugs. (Unfortunately, the table vanished in 2017, so I had to find new ways to dispose of things, including the local thrift shop and the Vietnam Veterans.)

Three of the remaining 20 items never found a taker and were eventually recycled. Our old printer and my mom's old scanner went to electronics recycling shed run by our local Department of Public Works, and a pair of CFL bulbs that didn't fit any of our lamps went into the recycling bin at Home Depot. So even if these items couldn't be reused, at least they didn't end up as toxic waste in a landfill.

There were two posts that we eventually retracted. One, as I mentioned above, was the pair of cloth masks that I ended up altering to fit me. The other was a square food container that we hadn't really been using, but once it became apparent no one else was interested in it, we decided to hold on to it rather than throw it away. It actually did prove useful for a while as a way to transport blocks of tofu purchased sans packaging at the Whole Earth Center, eliminating the need for disposable plastic bags. However, we haven't been able to get to the Whole Earth Center much lately, and on the few occasions when we've been there, the bulk tofu didn't appear to be available anymore. So this item may end up being relisted at some point.

The only items that never found homes were:

• Four teddy bears in like-new condition, including one quite nice one that still had its tags on. They're still sitting on our windowsill, since it seemed too cruel to just consign them to the trash.
• One unused oil filter for our old car, which we eventually had to throw away.
• One reusable plastic drinking cup with a lid and built-in straw, which is still taking up space in our cupboard.
• A pair of earrings made from some semiprecious stone I couldn't identify, which are still taking up space — but not too much — in my jewelry box. (The matching necklace was taken.)
• Our old cordless phone, which has so far been listed not only on Freecycle but also on our local Buy Nothing Group and in the "finds" section on our local Nextdoor group, all to no avail. (Maybe nobody around here uses landline phones anymore?) I guess we may end up taking this one to the recycling shed as well — a pity, since it still works, but the only reasonable alternative if no one wants it.
  
• A partly-used box of Tagamet (an anti-acid medication) and the partly-used bottle of potassium supplements I listed recently. I guess we can always dispose of these at our town's next medication takeback day, since it's not recommended to flush them down the toilet.

So, assuming my math is correct, our various efforts have successfully kept 116 items out of the landfill. Better still, 106 of those items went to people who (presumably) could use them, saving them money and saving the energy and natural resources that would have gone into making new items they would otherwise have purchased.

In short, Freecycle is a good, but not perfect way to dispose of unwanted items — particularly lamps, electronics, and kitchen gadgets (at least in our area). But some items — such as stuffed animals and over-the-counter drugs (at least in our area) — will never be all that welcome, and it's best to have alternative routes for getting rid of them. (Anyone know a good place to give away teddy bears?)