Broken Furniture? People Want it - Give it Away!

Everyone has at least one piece of furniture that is broken, sitting in the basement or garage waiting for repair. When you finally decide that you aren't going to repair it, don't just haul it to the curb for the trashman to take away and throw in a landfill. Post your broken furniture - with details of how it is broken - on a "free" site like Craigs List (choose the "free" section) or www.freecycle.org.

We went to a country auction a few years back, and they were selling some straight chairs. Before I could get my hand up to bid on the one that I wanted, the auctioneer included five other chairs that were in some state of disrepair. I got the whole lot for $2, the catch being of course that I now owned five broken chairs as well as the one chair that I wanted. I posted the broken chairs, with a picture, on my local Freecycle site. Before I knew it, I had two people who wanted my chairs. The one who came to get them told me that he was in the process of teaching himself chair caning, and these would be ideal practice chairs for him. One of the chairs he got was an Eastlake chair. He was thrilled.

I was thrilled, too, because I was able to keep five chairs out of a landfill while giving a very nice fellow the opportunity to practice his caning on some really nice old chairs.

I have learned never to decide that something has no value. Just because it has no value to me, doesn't mean someone else won't be able to do something with it. Even a broken up bookcase can be turned into a bird house if you have the skills and the tools.

Freecycling takes a few minutes of your time and a little effort to manage the emails you'll get - well worth it when you consider that you are reducing the waste in your local landfills!