Freecycle

If you guys have never heard of Freecycle, you are missing out. Freecycle is an online bulletin board that works a lot like Craigslist, only instead of posting items for sale, you post items you want to give away. You never know what people will post on there. Once, my husband got a huge box of books on philosophy. I've seen whole projects on Apartment Therapy made entirely from Freecycle finds. It's like dumpster diving made much more efficient, and less smelly! It's also a great way to post things you no longer have a use for, but might be great for someone else who has a need for them, or the time and energy to fix them up. Not only that, but you can just put your item out on the front porch or the curb, and someone will come and take them for you. It's a lot better than waiting for heavy trash day to get rid of that old couch, and you get to help someone out to boot. I'm thinking I might post some of Maddy's old baby items and save myself a trip to the thrift store.

I hadn't been on the Indianapolis Freecycle page in a year or two, but a friend of mine happened to see a post offering a ton of ceramic underglazes and thought of me. I contacted the poster, who lived 10 minutes away from me, and picked up two huge bags full of underglazes the next day. How awesome is that? I'm sure I'll have to test a lot of them to be sure they're ok for cone 6, but there's definitely a lot in there I know I can use. I decided to donate them to the studio and share them with our members so we can all use them. Now I know I'm gonna be checking Freecycle on a regular basis. You never know, someone might have an old wheel to part with! I can certainly dream, can't I?

Have any of you ever gotten something awesome for free on Freecycle or Craigslist? Picked up an old broken kiln, or a piece of furniture that you fixed up? If you've got good freebie stories, I wanna hear them!