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In Praise of Freecycle: The Kindness of Strangers

By Anita Mathias

A corner of my study. As you can see, I have kept too many books!!

In 2006, when I was establishing our publishing business, I decided not to buy ANYTHING if I could get it on Freecycle. And so, we partly moved out of the cash economy for a while. Here is my account of our adventures.


                                                         The Kindness of Strangers

The words flashed greenly.
Free Yamaha PSR. An electric keyboard which simulates a harp…  “Let’s get it,” I say.
“The kids aren’t musical,” my true love says to me.
“They might be,” I say.  “And it’s free.”
Fatal words.
“I love music,” our seven year old adds brightly.
It’s our first day on Freecycle.org, founded in Tuscon in May 2003 by Deron Beal. However, since it’s slightly déclassé, like E-bay, money, underwear, those on it never mention it.  Three years later, three million people are. After some dithering, I join them.  
The dithering was prescient. Freecycle feels like a barking carnival, a literal free-for-all.  Through the day,  e-mails: Offered, going, GONE, and raucous WANTEDS.  Whoosh. “Freecycle!” the children say, excitedly, resignedly. 
We are offered a pair of seventeen foot kayaks. The idea of young girls handling those monstrosities appealed.  We’ve now to get life jackets and paddles—but, hey, it was free.  
                                                                               * * *
A poet’s widow offers bookcases on Freecycle. I describe my plight, boxes of Freecycle books, impulsively garnered, poetry, novels, gardening, chess, art, cookbooks, children’s books, clogging the arteries of our home. Books, books, everywhere, and not a minute to read.
She asks archly, “Do you need more books? Geoffrey left fifty thousand.”  Does one need heroin?
My heroine. What books!!  Rare first editions, many signed, furred with dust, in every nook of a four storey house.  “He didn’t know when to stop,” she explains. “When he wanted me to build an arch over our bed for books, it was a health and safety issue.  ‘It’s the books or me,’ I said.”
Three times we fill our people carrier with the fruits of his choice, then stop, weariness prevailing where good sense does not.  I think superstitiously of the Hope diamond and heartbreak. Besides, our house is beginning to resemble hers.  
                                                                                   * * *

In Sissinghurst, Vita Sackville-West’s romantic English garden, everyone lived and wrote in a house or outbuilding of their own. (Hers was a tower!)  That’s what each of us need, we concurred. A house of our own.
Freecycle gave it to us. A garden shed with huge picture windows; a twelve foot conservatory; a hexagonal greenhouse. 
Can an acre and a half become cluttered?  If one is not careful!  If one becomes The Fool who Built Bigger Barns.
We get Duke on Freecycle, “an Alsatian, handsome, good with kids, great guard dog.”  Too good to be true?  Unfortunately!  Handsome, yes, in a wolfish way; his alert eyes and shaggy mane beguile us while his ears jaggedly clipped by his abusive first owners prick up as we are lectured on his neuroses. Once home, he demonstrates them. The tyrant dog rounds up every ball he finds, glaring at us though his sharp aristocratic eyes, and nipping us with his sharp aristocratic teeth if we approach them or him.  Back he goes. The kids cry.
                                                                                       * * *
Autumn is the season of mists and rabbits. We acquire timid, sweet-faced Freecycled baby Twilight, who eats and eats and becomes a massive armful of Giant European hare; chipmunk-faced Chippy, a Netherlandish Dwarf; and Starlight, a dull thrice-rescued rabbit. 
 Freecycle provides hutches and runs for the rabbits, and the Freecycle ducklings and hens.  A hermit, courting frugality, once got a free cat to kill the mice, and then a cow for free milk for the cat , and then a field for free green grass for the cow… 
                                                                                          * * *
Having just moved from the US, we found ourselves, in mid-life without anything electrical that worked! From those migrating across the ponds, we, perhaps foolishly, acquire booty: a wide-screen TV/VCR, all-region DVD player, a fridge, freezer, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner–stop-gaps until time and money abound. We accept an unwanted inherited Mitsubishi, so no longer have to maneuver our people carrier “the wrong way” on Oxford’s narrow streets. A handmade Edwardian tallboy in beautiful woods. Massive cherry bookcases. Chinese lamps.
Organizing our loot frazzles us.
Freecycle. The potlatch of the affluent society. A giving to strangers unprecedented in the history of the world? The kids love it, Christmas through the year. A ten foot trampoline, instant rejuvenation. A portable swimming pool.  An ice-cream maker.  An astronomical telescope.  A microscope.  The dreamy musings of a summer’s day become reality like the three wishes of fairy tale (with their secret caveat: Be careful what you wish for.)
  It’s the biggest, weirdest, funnest catalogue in the world.  You didn’t know these things existed; you didn’t know you needed them; and now, you have to have them!! 
And, in this case, ultimate lure–
It’s Free.
A free lunch, you drive to, store, care for, and maintain. 
                                                                                      * * *
 
If you wants to be busy, it’s just the thing.  Honey Do lists grow. Chandeliers, mirrors, wall-mounted shoe boxes–projects–pile up in the utility room.  Inanimate objects, like living things, demand attention: dusting, straightening…  If they don’t get it, they too, in code, scream.
My jealously guarded in-box fills. The administrative challenge of pick-ups and deliveries mounts.  Distraction!  “S.T.U.F.F.–Something That Undermines Family Fun.”
You read your e-mail incredulously. All these people going though their houses, getting rid of all this stuff, and all these people gazing at their computer screens, acquiring this stuff, propelled by the dangerous, contra-spiritual force of greed.
“Things are in the saddle and ride mankind,” Emerson wrote.  Still are, still do.
“I was a mathematician,” my husband says wistfully.  “I wrote,” I say.
The tenses tense us. 
“A good story,” he says, hopefully, “has a beginning, middle, and an end.” 
“It used to,” I say.
Ours does. I survive seven weeks on the Freecycle list, seven weeks of details of stuff 15,000 people in Oxford want to (or have) acquired or shed.  Too much of good things can also be toxic. Too much water can poison.
Enough! I succumb to quieter lures.  A life free from greed.  Simple living, high thinking, in the way of ancient sages–or a rough approximation of both.
I now recycle. 

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Comments

  1. Anita Mathias says

    March 21, 2012 at 7:59 pm

    Lol! You'll suddenly stop, and become a Freecycle giver once you can't find what you need in all the largesse.
    Thanks for your comment, and welcome to my blog, Sherrey!

  2. Sherrey says

    March 21, 2012 at 2:52 am

    Sorry but I found myself giggling as I read! We've recently been helping a sibling and his wife downsize as health issues require them to move from 3000 sq.ft. to a little less than 800. The corner of your study is what my home is beginning to look like — I can't leave a book behind, or a blank journal, or a CD, or anything they offer! And now I'm beginning to feel greedy . . . we must STOP! Thanks for a delightful piece of reading tonight.

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Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art

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The Story of Dirk Willems

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Runner Up Christian Media Awards 2014 - Tweeter of the year

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anita.mathias

Writer, Blogger, Reader, Mum. Christian. Instaing Oxford, travel, gardens and healthy meals. Oxford English alum. Writing memoir. Lives in Oxford, UK

Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford # Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford #walking #tranquility #naturephotography #nature
So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And h So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And here we are at one of the world’s most famous and easily recognisable sites.
#stonehenge #travel #england #prehistoric England #family #druids
And I’ve blogged https://anitamathias.com/2020/09/13/on-not-wasting-a-desert-experience/
So, after Paul the Apostle's lightning bolt encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he went into the desert, he tells us...
And there, he received revelation, visions, and had divine encounters. The same Judean desert, where Jesus fasted for forty days before starting his active ministry. Where Moses encountered God. Where David turned from a shepherd to a leader and a King, and more, a man after God’s own heart.  Where Elijah in the throes of a nervous breakdown hears God in a gentle whisper. 
England, where I live, like most of the world is going through a desert experience of continuing partial lockdowns. Covid-19 spreads through human contact and social life, and so we must refrain from those great pleasures. We are invited to the desert, a harsh place where pruning can occur, and spiritual fruitfulness.
A plague like this has not been known for a hundred years... John Piper, after his cancer diagnosis, exhorted people, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer”—since this was the experience God permitted you to have, and He can bring gold from it. Pandemics and plagues are permitted (though not willed or desired) by a Sovereign God, and he can bring life-change out of them. 
Let us not waste this unwanted, unchosen pandemic, this opportunity for silence, solitude and reflection. Let’s not squander on endless Zoom calls—or on the internet, which, if not used wisely, will only raise anxiety levels. Let’s instead accept the invitation to increased silence and reflection
Let's use the extra free time that many of us have long coveted and which has now been given us by Covid-19 restrictions to seek the face of God. To seek revelation. To pray. 
And to work on those projects of our hearts which have been smothered by noise, busyness, and the tumult of people and parties. To nurture the fragile dreams still alive in our hearts. The long-deferred duty or vocation
So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I have totally sunk into the rhythm of it, and have got quiet, very quiet, the quietest spell of time I have had as an adult.
I like it. I will find going back to the sometimes frenetic merry-go-round of my old life rather hard. Well, I doubt I will go back to it. I will prune some activities, and generally live more intentionally and mindfully.
I have started blocking internet of my phone and laptop for longer periods of time, and that has brought a lot of internal quiet and peace.
Some of the things I have enjoyed during lockdown have been my daily long walks, and gardening. Well, and reading and working on a longer piece of work.
Here are some images from my walks.
And if you missed it, a blog about maintaining peace in the middle of the storm of a global pandemic
https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/  #walking #contemplating #beauty #oxford #pandemic
A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine. A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine.  We can maintain a mind of life and peace during this period of lockdown by being mindful of our minds, and regulating them through meditation; being mindful of our bodies and keeping them happy by exercise and yoga; and being mindful of our emotions in this uncertain time, and trusting God who remains in charge. A new blog on maintaining a mind of life and peace during lockdown https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/
In the days when one could still travel, i.e. Janu In the days when one could still travel, i.e. January 2020, which seems like another life, all four of us spent 10 days in Malta. I unplugged, and logged off social media, so here are some belated iphone photos of a day in Valetta.
Today, of course, there’s a lockdown, and the country’s leader is in intensive care.
When the world is too much with us, and the news stresses us, moving one’s body, as in yoga or walking, calms the mind. I am doing some Yoga with Adriene, and again seeing the similarities between the practice of Yoga and the practice of following Christ.
https://anitamathias.com/2020/04/06/on-yoga-and-following-jesus/
#valleta #valletamalta #travel #travelgram #uncagedbird
Images from some recent walks in Oxford. I am copi Images from some recent walks in Oxford.
I am coping with lockdown by really, really enjoying my daily 4 mile walk. By savouring the peace of wild things. By trusting that God will bring good out of this. With a bit of yoga, and weights. And by working a fair amount in my garden. And reading.
How are you doing?
#oxford #oxfordinlockdown #lockdown #walk #lockdownwalks #peace #beauty #happiness #joy #thepeaceofwildthings
Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social d Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social distancing. The first two are my own garden.  And I’ve https://anitamathias.com/2020/03/28/silver-and-gold-linings-in-the-storm-clouds-of-coronavirus/ #corona #socialdistancing #silverlinings #silence #solitude #peace
Trust: A Message of Christmas He came to earth in Trust: A Message of Christmas  He came to earth in a  splash of energy
And gentleness and humility.
That homeless baby in the barn
Would be the lynchpin on which history would ever after turn
Who would have thought it?
But perhaps those attuned to God’s way of surprises would not be surprised.
He was already at the centre of all things, connecting all things. * * *
Augustus Caesar issued a decree which brought him to Bethlehem,
The oppressions of colonialism and conquest brought the Messiah exactly where he was meant to be, the place prophesied eight hundred years before his birth by the Prophet Micah.
And he was already redeeming all things. The shame of unwed motherhood; the powerlessness of poverty.
He was born among animals in a barn, animals enjoying the sweetness of life, animals he created, animals precious to him.
For he created all things, and in him all things hold together
Including stars in the sky, of which a new one heralded his birth
Drawing astronomers to him.
And drawing him to the attention of an angry King
As angelic song drew shepherds to him.
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By a homeless baby
The still point on which the world still turns. The powerful centre. The only true power.
The One who makes connections. * * *
And there is no end to the wisdom, the crystal glints of the Message that birth brings.
To me, today, it says, “Fear not, trust me, I will make a way.” The baby lay gentle in the barn
And God arranges for new stars, angelic song, wise visitors with needed finances for his sustenance in the swiftly-coming exile, shepherds to underline the anointing and reassure his parents. “Trust me in your dilemmas,” the baby still says, “I will make a way. I will show it to you.” Happy Christmas everyone.  https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/24/trust-a-message-of-christmas/ #christmas #gemalderieberlin #trust #godwillmakeaway
Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Gratitude journal, habit tracker, food and exercise journal, bullet journal, with time sheets, goal sheets and a Planner. Everything you’d like to track.  Here’s a post about it with ISBNs https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/23/life-changing-journalling/. Check it out. I hope you and your kids like it!
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