Stephen Blyth's Blog

Garage give-away – cancelled

Monday, May 18th, 2009, Travels, whanau, life

Apologies to anyone who turned up at 1pm on Saturday expecting to find a treasure trove. I cancelled the garage give-away I wrote about last week (see “Garage give-away – 1pm 16 May 2009″). Sorry I didn’t have time to put up a notice.

My decision hinged on the difficulty of advertising a real world event without the time or money to make it a success. Also, as I was giving stuff away I didn’t really want to pay to find people to give stuff to.

Nonetheless I’ve almost given away everything on my list (see the garage give-away page). Almost everything found a home through one online means or another.

This is how things unfolded….

A regular blog reader David Cross, whose work I’ve written about before (see “Downtown Community Ministry now on Facebook”), suggested I drop stuff off at the Island Bay Presbyterian Church (IBPC) which ran a garage sale on 16 May. I did just that. Salving my agnostic conscience and hopefully helping out the IBPC’s appeal for funds to support the work of the Presbyterian Church of Myanmar.

I’ve used Wellington Freecycle within the rules, ie advertising a series of single items. It’s been amazingly successful… a box of paint pots was grabbed seven minutes after the offer went up, and about six people wanted the juicer.

An early vintage Phil & Teds mountain buggy, which I thought would be consigned to the scrap heap, was also taken. It had a bent clasp which meant it was rejected by the recycling shed at the southern landfill – they only accept things that work.  I hope the new owners can truly wear it out.

Of all the interaction on Freecycle, only one exchange has gone awry. Maybe Monica didn’t get my message – whatever, the table is still sitting where I said it would be. Uncollected. Forlorn.

A chat with my neighbour, one of the few methods of passing on surpluses used since time immemorial, solved the puzzle of what to do with six rusty painter’s brackets and a couple of open bags of instancrete. Gone.

Being grandiloquent about freecycle is so tempting and I’m restraining an urge to rave on about Robert Puttman’s theories of social capital, or again raising Clay Shirky’s theories of how the Internet is lowering the barrier to people self-organising. I won’t. Instead I’ll simply say – cheers to the folk who helped us give stuff to each other.

PS We’ve still got a student study table; small, folding side table in green; and a bookcase to find homes for. Any takers?