Week 8 PURGE - Freecycle week

One person's junk is another person's treasure. I've never believed this more than since I joined Champaign-Urbana Freecycle several months ago. It boggles my mind what people are able to give away and what people are willing to take. You should join for nothing else then to laugh when people post an offer for a professionally mounted ringneck pheasant in flight position or post a search for Richard Simmons exercise videos. If you are partnering with me to PURGE, you should definitely join cuz you'll be able to get rid of stuff that you've convinced youself should just go in the trash if only you can bring yourself to part with it. Because you don't have to deal face-to-face (there's no exchange of cash like on Craig's List), you don't have to be embarrased about offering your junk. See my comment on another local mom's bad pennies. With Freecycle you have nothing to loose, except for, well, your junk. So this week, I challenged myself to give as much away as possible using only Freecycle.

#43 Handful of Pens and #44 Binder - I have 2 storage places for pens. One is in my bedroom closet in a set of plastic drawers that also hold other office supplies. Those drawers were left over from my college years because I wanted everything I needed close to my desk, but not on it. I know, this doesn't make sense to now have in my closet, but WHATEVE. Those drawers are to be attacked some other time. The other hiding place is the basement. Oh the basement. We've moved all of our office stuff (all except what's in my closet and a desk that has been in our bedroom since I wrote my dissertation) into a big, but somewhat organized pile in the basement. This is an improvement, believe me. In this pile I also found one large binder I was willing to part with (I might need the others to organize my grad school papers).
Went to: Krista

#45 6 Scrubs - We've had these in the bottom drawer of our washing machine. Somehow we inherited them from Bo's brother when he moved from this area years ago. They're really soft, so good for PJs, but I'm too in love with my own jammies to put these to use. I used one as a rag, so it was pretty badly stained. And just FYI scrubs don't make good rags.
Went to: Canaan, a friend from church, and fellow Freecycler who's in vet school

#46 9 PC Video Games - We accumulated these over the years and have been storing them in the basement. Bo has played with all of them, but some of them we played together in college and maybe during an early bit of grad school. They bring back very fond memories (like naming our characters, kinda like naming kids, but you can be more crazy). Because we knew that we'll never play them again, we tried selling them on Craig's List but all offers seems spam-licious.
Went to: Karen

#47 20+ Travel/Trial Size Toiletries - I'm sure you have these too. You snag them from hotels...heck, you maybe even sneak extras. Well, the ones you don't open and use can be donated to homeless shelters or troops overseas. What to do with the opened ones that you only used once or twice while you where at the hotel? Freecycle! We now have one very clean bathroom drawer because all of these are gone!
Went to: Joy

#48 2 Bath toys - Well, we used them as bathtoys, but they're just random stuff that float. PURGd them from the bathroom too.
Went to: Joy

#49 8 Thank You Notes - Leftover from Monkey's birth for gifts we received. They're too baby-ish to use now. They've been in that big, yet somewhat organized pile of office supplies in the basement.
Went to: Joy

#50 Nonstick Skillet - We bought this as part of a set of pots and pans in the summer of 2001. We had picked out the set online, but couldn't find it in store locally. So while we were on a road trip to week-long dance workshop on the East Coast, we stopped a Kohl's to picked it up. We sold the rest of the set at a garage sale almost 2 years ago, but somehow missed this one in the depths of the basement.
Went to: Kim

#51 Mug - It's funny how this also related to our college dancing history. Bo and I each got one of these mugs because we were on "Let's Swing," a WILL special where we danced with to live music featuring The D'3 and UI Jazz Band. This has been in the basement too, cuz we only use a couple mugs.
Went to: Kim

#52 Kitchen Utensils - We have too many duplicate utensils from combining households. I'm sure there is more I could have gotten rid off, but these were just what I found from a quick swoop of our utensil drawer that I already cleaned out just a bit in Week 4 PURGE. In another week, my theme will be to clean out kitchen drawers.
Went to: Kim

So, are you conviced about Freecyle? Next week I'll PURGE by returning items to their righful owners.