I HEART Freecyclers/Freecycling

If you don't know what I am talking about ... you clearly haven't met me.

I learned about freecycling when I was preparing for my move to Albuquerque -- from a woman at the LDS Family Center, of all places.

I had been doing some family tree research and was stumped. I knew I needed to go to the LDS Center because they have the resources ... but it was at the time when the fight over same sex marriage was in full swing.  I felt like a traitor going to the home of the H8ters... but I needed the resources.

A lovely older woman was there helping ... she must have asked me five times if I was Mormon -- no, just here to look up the family tree stuff.  That is another story for another post -- I probably already wrote about it.

But, for some reason our talk turned to her foster child who aged out while in her care -- the woman's birth children hooked up the young woman with all the things she needed for her first apartment through freecycle.

Ah!

What a find... I signed up immediately for the Albuquerque freecycle because I was taking very little with me ... and would need things when I arrived.  But I was cautioned not to sign up til I got here so that I wouldn't get so much email of things I couldn't claim.

The Albuquerque Freecycle is vastly different than the Bay Area Freecycle -- but it is a community I adore ... we are all not-so-secret hoarders ... with things that we keep because we might need them someday -- and can't bear to put them in the trash (Thanks, Dad, for that genetic trait).

There are three kinds of posts OFFER (what you want to get rid of), WANTED (the tag says it all), and TAKEN (what you say when it is off your hands and into someone else's).

But given the right impetus -- someone else *needs* it -- we are happy to part with all the junk that is clogging up our lives.

On the one side of my heart is the hoarder -- but on the other is the pain of remembering what I couldn't bring with me when I left NJ.

As a result, I give things away with abandon ... anything that I haven't touched in a while, I feel like I should offer -- I don't always, but the thought crosses my mind.

And, the truth is, I ***LOVE*** giving things away.  When a million people want the same stupid thing I posted, I wish I had forty seven, so I could give them all away.

Sometimes, I find myself rummaging through my things to see if there is something I can post.

It is some other kind of madness, I am sure -- the other side of the coin of the hoarder?

In any case, there have been very few times when I posted an *ask* that wasn't fulfilled -- and I have scored many other things that I didn't *need* but couldn't help myself.  I find myself throwing some of those things back into the pool now as I pack.

Hooray for freecyclers... may we all have what we want ...