The ways in which you can find used items has grown considerably. In childhood and as a teenager, used items came from family, friends, thrift stores, the side of the road, and yard sales. Late in high school my family entered the ebay world (the long-distance yard sale as I liked to think of it). During college I got most of my second hand things from friends. Post-college, I still use all of the earlier methods, but craigslist has made the exchange of miscellaneous stuff so much easier. Just in the past month I also joined the Chicago Freecycle group. I'd like to compare the merits of craigslist and Freecycle for getting second hand items because they accomplish similar goals, which is getting things from people who don't want them to people who do.
Craigslist Pros
- Extremely simple format.
- Searchable by location, item, price range, etc.
- Pictures can be posted to a listing.
- More expensive used items can be found, such as cars (I bought and sold my first car on craigslist). You're not likely to see a working vehicle come up on Freecycle.
- You can RSS searches so they come up automatically in your feed reader (or your bookmarks toolbar in Safari). This lets you know within about 30 minutes of the posting so you've got a much better chance of snagging high demand items like free furniture.
- Not everything is free.
- Are there others? I can't think of any.
Freecycle Pros
- Everything is FREE
- The freecycle group you join is limited to your town or area (in my case, Chicago)
- The listserv format is tedious. You can either get each individual email offer as it is sent, or you can get the digest. If you get individual emails, it's a LOT of email. If you get the digest, by the time you read it it might already be 'promised' to someone else.
- You can't easily search for items specifically from your neighborhood. This is important for someone like me who is car-free and lives in a big place like Chicago.
- People tend to list their location by zip code. This is useful if you know exactly where all of the zip codes are in Chicago.
- You can't easily search for specific items you want like on craigslist.
- No photos of the items.
My verdict: I really like the concept of Freecycle, but I think they need to change the format. I think they need to find a way to make it more like craigslist so you can look only for the items you're interested in or items in your general area. I'm not terribly interesting in sifting through 6 digests every day to see if someone is giving away something I want in a place where I could actually pick it up without much hassle. My craigslist RSS's do a much better job of alerting me to items in my neighborhood that I might want (example: Pilsen yard sales), even if they aren't free.
One other observation about Craigslist, though, is that it does not have a "mission" like Freecycle and therefore is used differently. I find it very annoying to see listings under Free that say things like "come and get it, the stuff's by the dumpster." This is even worse than getting the Freecycle digest and finding that something you need has already been promised. Instead, you have to slog over to the place only to find that the item is gone, or is messed up because someone else only wanted to scavange part of it. On Freecycle, people understand that the goal is to keep items out of landfill, therefore they hang onto them and arrange for pick up, ensuring the item goes to a recipient.
ReplyDeleteThat's true, but I think that also has it's merits. I'll only follow up on a listing that says it's by the dumpster if it's really close by. I only look at free listings for my neighborhood sincec it's definitely not worth the hassle to go further. Having dealt with the frustration of no-shows, I can understand why someone would just put something outside. In my experience, stuff that's worthwhile finds a new home. In the end I think they both serve to keep things out of the landfill, and reduce peoples' needs to buy things new.
ReplyDeleteHi Carrie, thanks for the interesting post. I'd like to add some comments from the perspective of someone trying to give away stuff instead of get stuff.
ReplyDeleteFreecycle is great when you are giving away something with either sentimental value or no street value. For example, I was happy to give my son's rock collection to another little boy who loves rocks. I doubt that rock collection would have helped Salvation Army or fetched a price on craigslist. But craigslist is far better if you don't want to deal with the dozens of emails that arrive from hopeful freecyclers hours (even days) after you have already given the stuff away. I use both and am delighted to have less unwanted/unneeded stuff in my home!