Declutter Challenge

So far, my year of decluttering is not starting off with a bang, but with a whimper.  Like so many things though, if you do it with other people it works better.  Get your mind out of the gutter, folks.  I'm talking about things like support groups or blog challenges.  In this case, specifically The Single Saver's Declutter Challenge. 

According to this challenge, stuff doesn't count as gone until it is actually gone, so the pile of clothes I have to pass on to St. Vinny's and the items I have posted on Listia to get rid of are still here until they are physically gone.  I'm planning on logging what I actually get rid of (which, if you regularly follow my blog, you know I want to get rid of a lot to make room for my year's supply of food storage) on the blog.  Sadly, since I haven't actually gotten rid of anything yet, I'm going to just list what I am getting rid of as "pending":

1) box of clothes (I'm going to count it as a unit, rather than the individual pieces of clothing, since they were already in the box at the time I decided to start the challenge.

2) pair of size 10 girls tap shoes, available on Listia until Sunday, January 15: my daughter just used them for a 6 week class and now she's outgrown them.  Since she's my only daughter, there is no need to hang onto them!

3) unpadded ring sling: my 2 year old isn't much one for being worn anymore and even when he does want to be in a carrier, this isn't the one I use anymore.  It was my favorite to use when the babies were really little though, so I hope it finds a good home, since we aren't planning on having any more kids.  Also available on Listia until Sunday, January 15.

Food Storage in a Small Space

When I announced a couple days ago that I was planning on gathering a year's supply of food for my family, the number one question I was asked (right ahead of "aren't you worried about being branded a potential terrorist?", which I plan on covering in another post) was where the heck are you going to put all of that food?

My short answer is:  anywhere I can!

That isn't a flippant answer either.  I don't have a basement, spare room, or even a pantry where I can stack mountains of #10 cans and large food-grade buckets.  With 6 of us (even when he isn't here, my 12 year old has enough stuff here that he still counts!) in a single wide trailer, space is definitely at a premium!

To make the best possible use of my house to free up space for food storage, the first thing I'm doing is a massive decluttering effort.  Anything that we don't need or want will be gone!  I've never been one to hang on to things longer than needed, but we'll be taking it to the next level: getting the family involved.  Over the next week or two, I want to go through all of our stuff and figure out what actually belongs in our home.  If it is something we will want later, we might stick it out in the garage, but the house will be reserved for active duty stuff.

Of the things we don't want, some will be sold, some will be given away, and some will be traded.  Trading is my favorite way to get rid of stuff, since I can then replace it with things we actually need (or maybe want).  Some of my favorite websites are Paperbackswap.com for trading books (not just paperbacks), SwapaDVD.com for swapping DVDs (or BluRays, but I don't have any of those), and my husband just found this great site called Listia, which is a free, bid-based (using points instead of money) site for trading anything you want!  We'll probably be making a lot of use of that one as we declutter over the next few weeks!  Some of the stuff we give away will be going to St. Vincent de Paul's, since they give clothes for free to people that can't afford their thrift store prices and the one closest to us just had a fire last month so needs to be restocked (we actually found about the fire when we were going to go there to see about getting some clothes that our family needed!  So much for that idea!).  Other stuff will be given away on Freecycle, since that is where I usually come up with anything we need.

Once we get rid of the stuff we don't need, I should have lots of places to stash things around the house.  Some places that someone in a tight living space like ours might stick food storage are:

under beds (in boxes to slide out easily)
in bedroom closets
in areas above cabinets
behind books on bookshelves
in unused dresser drawers
in covered crates that serve as end tables, a coffee table, or night stands
on shelving installed in any free wall space
boxes or crates stacked in out of the way places
in pest-proof totes or other containers in the garage (for foods that temperature changes won't hurt)

I don't really know if there is enough room here for a whole year's worth of food, but I'm still going to try.  The beautiful thing about a project like this is that it doesn't have to be all done a the time.  I can get the supplies I can and make room as I go.  If I run out of space, maybe I'll come up with another plan, like stashing some at someone else's house or something, or maybe we'll move by then and be in a place with more storage.  I'm not going to let the uncertainties stop me from starting.  As long as I get what I can, and we use it in some sort of rotation, it doesn't really matter how or where we store it!  I'll burn that bridge when we get to it, I guess.

Promote It And They Will Come--running a "Really, Really Free Market"

Yesterday was what I'm hoping will be the last Really, Really Free Market in Jackson, MI that I organize.  I hope it continues and will do what I can to promote it online, but I don't want to have to drive that far anymore!  I've been looking for someone to take it over since we moved in October, but hadn't found anyone until today.  I don't know why, but I suspect that it sounds like a lot of work to organize a RRFM.  It really isn't. 

Basically, if you promote it, they will come.

I've been at a severe disadvantage promoting the Jackson one, since I live about an hour's drive away now, so I couldn't flyer the town or anything, but I've been posting on the thing's Facebook page, Freecycle, and reallyreallyfree.org and people still show up in a quantity sufficient to make them worthwhile (as in, I get rid of most or all the stuff I don't want anymore and usually find some seriously cool stuff I want as well), but I know it hasn't been living up to the potential that exists. 

Beyond promoting the event itself, all that is required is picking a place where you're allowed to be (no worries about permits, since what do you need a permit for?), pick a date and time, and showing up, maybe with some "seed" stuff to give away or skills or talents or free food to share.  That's it.  Easy-peasy...and so worthwhile since you can meet some really cool people at them, learn some really cool stuff (I taught a lady about my homemade laundry detergent today), and have a lot of fun.  As a bonus, I've been scheduling them at parks near playgrounds so the kids can play while I give away!  It ends up being a really fun thing for the whole family!

Wait, you might be saying, what is a "Really, Really Free Market" anyway?  Glad you asked!  The site reallyreallyfree.org puts it better than I could, so here is their description:

A Really Really Free Market (RRFM) is like a community gathering where participants bring, and give away absolutely free, any usable items, skills, ideas, smiles, talents, friendship, excitement, discussions, games and many others things that we as a community can come together and share. An RRFM is a 100% free and non-commercial event, organized by participants just like you. It is a temporary autonomous zone instituting the gift economy as an alternative to the capitalist mode of resource distribution. An RRFM is not just a once a month party, it is an ethos and a way of being that transforms people through its experience and is then carried into other areas of life.

So now that you see how easy it is and how cool they are, think you'll start one in your area if one doesn't already exist?

Controlling the Clothing Chaos

May is the exact wrong time of year to have a yard sale!  Between getting the garden in, end of school year things, sports schedules, and everything else going on, it just is too much to try to get ready for a yard sale too.  This trailer park's community wide yard sale is this Saturday (9-4, stop on by if you're local!).  *sigh* 

I don't remember if individual yard sales are allowed in this park according to the lease, but, even if they were, it is better to participate in a community wide one since they take care of the advertising and promotion, plus the fact that it is community wide draws more people, so I guess I need to suck it up and get ready for this Saturday's sale.  *sigh*

Last night, as part of my preparations for the sale, I pulled out all the children's "too big" clothes and organized them by size.  Whoa!  I had far too much piled up!  The crazy thing is that I didn't buy any of it!  It was all hand-me-downs from my older kids and from well-meaning friends passing on their families' hand-me-downs.  The thing that boggled my mind was the bags from other people.  (Friends and family, I'm not even sure which bags were from who, so I'm not picking on anyone in particular here, if you feel picked on.  And thank you for your generous gift of clothes, but please no more for the boys!)  In one bag, so I know it was from one person, I found more than 20 pairs of 2T shorts!  In another, I found more than 20 short sleeve shirts of the same size!  What on earth does such a small person, or anyone for that matter, need with so many clothes?

The size 2T-3T clothes I went through.  There were similar amounts of 4T-5 clothes, then it dropped off since most of the larger clothes are in use or stored somewhere else.

Maybe I'm strange, but I really don't see the point of someone having that many clothes, unless maybe someone doesn't have a washer and dryer in their house and can only make it to a Laundromat every couple of weeks.  But every family I know that has masses of clothes for their kids, and themselves for that matter, does have laundry facilities in the home.  I've been shocked many, many times when going to other people's homes and seeing all the clothes.  In many families, one member of the family has more than my entire family of six!

Having too many clothes is expensive.  Not just acquiring the clothes, since, like I do, many families get them from Freecycle or friends or relatives.  Even if you get these masses of clothes second-hand from a thrift store or on clearance at Wal-mart (as a number of tags on the hand-me-downs never even worn state), it adds up!  Once you have the clothes, you have to have a place to store them.  That's probably part of why my family does fine in a single-wide trailer when most families of our size seem to think they "need" something that is near palatial by my standards--they have to have a place to keep their stuff.  A lot of families seem to think they "need" storage containers and space bags or the like to hold all their off season clothes because their drawers and closets are overflowing with the current season's stuff. 

But how much of that stuff is actually ever worn?  If you look at what kids chose to wear, they probably gravitate to the same few clothing items every time they are clean, or even if they aren't clean.  Many clothes, like the ones from Wal-mart I mentioned earlier, never even get worn.  So why spend the time and effort to maintain them?  Even clothes that rarely or never get worn steal away your time and energy if your kids are like mine.  It seems like they don't know how to get dressed without throwing everything they don't want to wear on the floor.  A lot of those clothes, even though they were never worn, end up having to be washed, folded, and put away again.  I try not to keep more than 5-6 of each thing available to the kids because of this.  They don't need more than that, really they only need about 3 of each since I do laundry daily, and it keeps the chaos down to a minimum.  With three kids 6 and under, "a minimum" chaos is still plenty!

Weekly Earth Hour?

Last night's observance of Earth Hour got me thinking.  How much money could we save if we made this a weekly thing?  It could be another kind of family fun night even.  I know growing up, I was especially fond of power outages, since it meant that everyone sat around and read, told stories, or played board games.  So why not do this intentionally?  I'm sure it would save something on the electric bill too, although I don't know how much.  I know I was amazed at how much we saved last month by my leaving the heavy door open during sunny days, even with near or below freezing temperatures outside, since the sunlight coming in through the storm door would act as a solar collector and heats up the whole house, sometimes as much as 10 degrees.  In February!  It saved $30 of our gas bill last month!

I'm pretty sure having a weekly Earth Hour wouldn't make that much of an impact on our electric bill, but what about a daily one?  What about just making a more conscious effort to go to bed earlier and get up closer to dawn so we have lots more "Earth Hours" while we are sleeping?  What about turning the television off and spending time with the family every night?

I don't know how I'm going to implement some of these ideas in my family, or even if I'll be able to since I'm pretty sure to meet some heavy resistance by my husband and kids over the TV watching thing, but I'm going to be reading Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology with the folks over at Crunchy Chicken, so it will be interesting to see what sort of effects it has on me with this seed of thought already planted in my head.

Freecycle

Yay!  It happened again!  A lot of times, I’ll start thinking, “oh, I need to get such-and-such” and that thing will appear on the local Freecycle or ReUseIt group and be gifted to me!  In this case, it was some jeans for my oldest son.  Apparently his dad (with whom he lives) doesn’t get him the right sized pants so all his pants that fit come from me.  Lovely.  Now he should have enough to keep some here and some at his dad’s house though, without me having to spend any money, since I already pay plenty in child support that his dad is supposed to be using to get him these things.

About 20 pairs of jeans! (there is a second row behind this)

I love Freecycle, and the local ReUseIt group actually used to be a Freecycle group.  I’ve been part of one or the other or both, even serving as a Freecycle moderator for a time, pretty much since the organization’s earliest days.  I don’t even remember how I first heard of it, but it has been such a boon to my life.  Everything from books to clothes to televisions to computer equipment to furniture to canning jars have either come into my home or left my home via a Freecycle transaction.  In all these years of doing this, I’ve found that my personal Freecycle-style works quite well, and would like to see other people follow my “rules” for Freecycle transactions, since it seems to result in a lot less “no-shows” and dissatisfied people, so I decided to share them here:

Guidelines for Givers

• When you post, follow the official guidelines of putting “OFFER” then the item in the subject line of your post, even if it isn’t strictly enforced in your group.  Also, put the location in the subject line, so someone living in some outlying corner of the region doesn’t even bother opening the email unless it is something they really super need.  People that live too far away are the most likely to be no-shows in my experience, so you can save yourself a lot of hassle just by doing that one simple thing.  An example subject line using this format would be:  “OFFER:  damaged dresser (Webberville)”

• In the body, go into more detail about the item you are giving away so people can decide whether they are really interested in it.  If someone is very excited about an item, they’re more likely to keep their agreement to pick it up and do so when they said.  Be honest though!  If you lie about the condition of the item, like fail to mention it is broken, you are going to make the recipient made and they might not take it, even if they do show when they are supposed to.  From the above example: “it might be able to be repaired by someone who knows about wood, but I’m not sure.  One side got wet in the garage and seems warped.  It might be okay once it dries or maybe just suitable for scrap wood”)

• Use something that resembles an actual language in your post.  Complete sentences (or at least reasonable sentence fragments separated by punctuation) will go a lot farther in conveying  your message than a bunch of words without obvious organization.

• Toward the end of your post, mention that you’d like people to mention in their first post when they’d like to pick up.  This eliminates a lot of back and forth communication trying to set up a time, since the more emails that have to be sent back and forth, the greater chance there is for a communication breakdown that results in your item not being picked up.

• Don’t automatically give your item to the first person that responds.  This is the number one mistake I’ve seen others make that results in no-shows.  Instead, wait for at least a couple hours to get a variety of responses to pick from.  If you find someone that follows your instructions about including a pick up time in the first response and seems to really want it (good clues for who really wants it might include the words “please“ and “thank you“ somewhere in the post), that is probably going to be a good candidate to give to.  If someone replies with something like “i will take it give me ur address”, they don’t care enough to use punctuation, capital letters, manners, or follow your instructions, so what would make you think they’d care enough (or have the manners to) show up when they are supposed to, or at least let you know something is causing a delay. 

• When part of a larger group or a popular item, I frequently will decide upon who will receive an item from me by the times they mention as wanting to pick it up.  So if someone says they can pick it up today in the early afternoon, they might have first dibs, followed by someone else that says late afternoon, then someone that says evening, and so on.  Only email the person you’ve chosen your address.  Let them know there is a list of others that are interested (if this is true), so you need to know right away if there is a problem that they can’t come when they said.  If they don’t show up or email you back during or shortly after the time they said, you can email the next person to let them know where to pick up the item.  As much as possible, it is nice to be able to be flexible about when someone picks up, but you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to get rid of it by waiting too long to offer it to them.

• When you have a long list of people interested or the item is actually picked up, post it as “TAKEN” on the group.  This will let the people you didn’t email individually know not to get their hopes up and will keep you from getting flooded with more emails.

Suggestions for Potential Recipients

• Be polite.  You are asking for someone to give you a gift.  Demanding the item is a sure way to have your email deleted without consideration by myself and a lot of other people!

• Use English (or whatever language is applicable if you aren’t in an English speaking area).  Punctuation and sentences make reading your request a lot easier and a lot more likely to be responded to.  Spelling and grammar don’t have to be perfect, but it should be close enough that the reader can understand what you are trying to say without hurting their brain.

• Follow instructions.  If you are instructed to mention what time you’d like to pick up in the first email, do it.  If there are several items listed and you are told to list which ones you are interested in, do it.  If you are told you must take all of a random selection of things and “freecycle” (not a correct use of the term, since it is a trademarked word and not a verb, but people use it like it is) the rest, do it.  If you are asked to say why you’d like the item, do it within reason.  It is not unreasonable for someone to know that you’d like something for your family as opposed to selling it, but no one needs to know that you are a single parent of 57 kids and on welfare so if you don’t get this one item your family will die (for example).  Use some sense with that last one.

• Pick up when you say you will.  If something happens, since things do happen from time to time in life, contact the giver as soon as possible to let them know what is going on and possibly arrange another time to retrieve it.  Again, be polite with this one.  If you don’t contact them for a few hours after you were supposed to get it and they already gave it to someone else, this is not unreasonable.  It would be unreasonable to expect them to hold the gift they have for you indefinitely in the hopes that you might contact them someday.

So these are the personal guidelines I use for these types of transactions and I find I have a much lower rate of no-shows than most people seem to, so I think they work very well as a giver.  I also find I have a pretty good rate of receiving things I ask for, so I think those are pretty successful as well.

Opting Out of the American Dream

Growing up, I had the notion, a lie given to me by society, that I would graduate from high school, go to college, and, upon graduation, have a good job, a nice career, and live happily ever after, maybe with a nice house, white picket fence, and 2.5 kids for good measure.  Boy, was I hoodwinked!

I did my part.  I graduated from high school with good grades, went on to the University of Michigan, graduated with nearly 3.0 (2.94, actually, but who's counting), started looking for jobs long before I graduated, but didn't find one.  Graduated, kept looking, still didn't find one.  Finally, to make money doing something, I took a job canvassing for a non-profit.  I enjoyed the work, but during that time, I ended up pregnant by one of my co-workers, not by choice (as in, I had a very strong drink at a bar called Heaven in Cleveland, don't remember most of what happened that night, woke up from being passed out in the hotel room about 5 in the morning with a dick in me, and found out a few weeks later I was pregnant.  Note added 3/5/11:  For anyone that doesn't know, when someone has sex with you without your consent, like in this scenario, THIS IS RAPE.  I'm not giving out more information on a "one night stand" than anyone needs to know, as one reader stated.  THIS IS RAPE.  This was a seriously traumatic experience in my life that shaped much of what came after.  The only reason this guy isn't rotting in jail is that acquaintance rape isn't understood by a lot of people, including those serving on police forces and juries, so I wasn't going to go through the pain that would result from a failed attempt to prosecute on top of everything else I was dealing with!).  After that, it became harder and harder to work there with my son's father and eventually, I quit (even though I would have had a damn good sexual harassment case, I cared too much about the work the non-profit did to sue).  From then, even though I still was looking for that mythical "good job after college", it was crappy near minimum wage job to crappy near minimum wage job.  Eventually, I realized that the "good job" I felt I was promised by my college degree didn't exist and stopped looking.  I ended up falling in love and getting married, we had a few kids, and I decided I didn't care.  And, in December, I took the final step of quitting what hopefully with be my last crappy near minimum wage job ever.  Actually, I hope that it is my last job ever, period!

I realized that I don't fit into society as it is portrayed and I was going to stop trying to fit in a role I never would fit in.  I've never felt like I belonged, so I started to really embrace that.  I am who I am and I have a right to be happy with who that person is.  I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I stay true to who that person is, and I don't think that means working for someone else.  My family is the most important thing to me, so that is where I focus my energies and attentions on, but not just in the "normal" sense.  I'm taking it to a whole new level, as you may see from time to time in this blog.

"What about money?" one might ask.  Well, that's where a lot of this extreme thriftiness comes from.  When you don't have to buy hardly anything, you don't need nearly as much money.  We don't have to buy much in the way of food, clothes, or other things largely because of my resourcefulness, and when we do, at this point, we still have my husband's income.  I say "still" because he is considerably older than me (16 years) and will probably want to or need to retire at some point.  By that time, I hope that the rest of my plan is in place.

Forget the "American dream"; I have my own dream now.  I want to build an Earthship for my family, somewhere in my native Michigan, grow all our own food, have some chickens and goats for eggs and milk, have some acreage for hunting and fishing if we want to.  I want to grow enough food that I can sell some at farmers' markets and spend my winters making crafts to sell at my market booth and maybe at craft shows.  I want to finally write a book or two.  I want to keep blogging as long as you people will support me at that so I can share my adventures and hopefully inspire someone else to live their own dream.  I doubt I'll ever be rich living my dream, but I'll be happy and really, that's the most important dream of all.

Cheap Reads

My workspace and a few of my books

I love books.  I've often said that I'm addicted to books.  I certainly show some signs of being addicted at times, getting shaky and irritable if I'm kept from an engrossing tale too long or spending grocery money on books instead of food--actually, that's part of how I got so good about feeding people on such a tight budget!  Fortunately, I have a couple thrifty ways to deal with my addiction.

The number one way I get books is from the library.  I feel incredibly blessed that we live in an area with a fantastic library system.  We have 13 branches plus a bookmobile for areas not near a permanent branch, but I'm only about 3 miles away from one of the branches so I haven't personally interacted with the bookmobile.  They have just about any book I want somewhere in the library system, so all I have to do if I want a book is request it online and it will magically appear at the front desk, usually within days!  I can even preorder books that haven't come out yet, sometimes months in advance, so I'm not tempted to buy them.  On the rare occurrence that they don't have a book I want, Michigan has an amazing interlibrary loan system set up as well.  Between our local library system and the state's interlibrary loan system, I have easy access to just about any book I could possibly want.


The only problem then is that sometimes, I don't want to give the books back and renewing only goes so far.  This rarely happens for my fiction books or the homeschooling books for the kids, but there are a lot of nonfiction books that I like to use again and again.  For these, I had to have a different source.  I know a lot of people like to browse used book stores, but for me, this is too chancy.  I have high standards of finding the exact books I want, so for this, I turn to a much larger online source, primarily Paperbackswap.com.  This is my absolute favorite of all the book swapping sites I've found on the web, and believe me when I tell you that I've tried a few!  One of my favorite things is that the site is free.  Just join, login, post books for trading and you get a couple credits each good for a book (or 2 credits for an audio book) right off the bat.  Once you mail off the books you have listed, you get a credit for each book, good for any other book in the system and right this second there are nearly 5,000,000 books in the system!  That's a pretty darn big used book store!  And you only have to pay for postage (about $2.50 for most books)!  It is super easy to mail a book from this site too.  When a book is requested, tell it you can mail the book and by when, then click the prompts to print your mailing label.  It even gives you the option to print the postage right onto the label from home.  Then, depending on the weight of the book and whether you put postage on it or not, you can either drop it off in your mailbox at home or take it down to the post office.  That's it.  Easy peasy!  If you want a book that isn't in the system, there is even a wish list feature, so you can let Paperbackswap.com know that you'd like a book when it does become available and it sticks you in line for that item.  When it becomes available, you have 48 hours that it is held just for you before it goes to the next person in line or to the general public if no one else has it on their wish list.  Nice!  Most of the books in the picture above came from Paperbackswap.com over the years that I've been using the service!  According to the site, I've saved over $3,000 by trading books there instead of buying them from a used bookstore.  I'd hate to see how much I'd have spent if I was silly enough to buy all those books new!

My third favorite place to get books is by random people giving them to me.  Sometimes this is people I know, sometimes it is strangers through Freecycle or a similar organization.  Again, this is a very random way to do it, but at least they are free and a lot of times books I don't want are listed on someone else's wish list on Paperbackswap.com, so I can trade them on there for something I do want!

A Truly Free Market

Just some of the random finds at the giveaway at the homeschool Valentine's Day party

I found a wonderful surprise when I took the kids to the day late homeschool Valentine's Day party yesterday.  Along the back wall, someone had set up a table with all sorts of things on it and taped a sign to the wall saying something along the lines of "If you can use it, you can have it."  There was everything from food to toys to a vacuum to books to computer games and all sorts of other things on the table and a couple boxes by the base of the table.  I wish I knew that was going to be going on before I had gone, since, just yesterday, I took about 4 boxes of things out of my house to the garage awaiting the chance to give them away at just such a thing.

I've long been a fan of these kinds of giveaways, often going to them as part of various Freecycle "Free-4-All"s, or through the similar ReUseIt Network (don't know if they have an official cutsie name for them though), and even helping organize a Free-4-All in conjunction with a local community college as part of their campus Earth Day celebration a couple years ago.  Last summer, I started to organize monthly "Really, Really Free Markets" at parks around Jackson, MI, but those have not been running the past few months since the weather got too cold to have them outdoors and we couldn't find a free place to have them inside.  Hopefully, they'll regain the momentum they were gathering before winter struck when the spring arrives.

The first Jackson, MI Really, Really Free Market--August 2010, Cascades Park

Jackson (MI) Really, Really Free Market--September 2010, Loomis Park

I've gotten a lot of really great stuff at giveaways, regardless of what you call them, just about anything you could imagine, really--anything from clothes (some even brand new), household items, furniture, purses, toys and games for the kids, a stereo, books, videos.  More importantly, I've been able to get rid of a lot of things that I didn't need, that were cluttering up my life and draining my energies just by being there.  Let me tell you, it can be quite a sanity saver to have less stuff (don't get me wrong, we still have a ton of stuff...this is an ongoing process to "destuff" our lives!) since it means less stuff to worry about getting out of place and cluttering up the house (especially true of kid stuff), less stuff to clean, less stuff to worry about someone stealing or breaking.  I know this is counter what is advertised on television, with the commercials constantly telling you that you need more stuff, specifically whatever stuff they are trying to sell you.  They lie.

You probably know this intellectually but really take it to heart--there is nothing advertised on television that you need.  So rather than spending your hard earned money, probably earned doing something you weren't too thrilled to be doing in the first place if your job is like most people's, on this junk, save it for stuff you really do need, like maybe keeping a roof over your head, or spend it doing something with someone you care about.  And what if instead of supporting a "free market" that costs us all in the time it takes to earn the money we are supposed to spend on this "free market" (not to mention potential environmental damage or societal damage it creates in the long run--a topic for another day), instead we support a gift economy that is a truly free market, where we all share our stuff we don't need, our ideas, our talents, and work toward building more of a community than holing ourselves up, isolated with our stuff?

These kinds of giveaways are easy to organize.  Pretty much everyone has stuff that they don't want or need anymore, so it is simply a matter of setting a time, a place, and promoting the heck out of it.  Promoting can be word of mouth, email, through email groups, Facebook, through Reallyreallyfree.org, or even old fashioned flyers around town.  As Mahatma Gandhi said, "You must be the change you want to see in the world."   Personally, I'd like to see people be less focused on stuff and more focused on each other, so that's what I'm working toward.  In other words, like I always tell the kids, "Share!"