Dear FlyLady,

I recently discovered a great way to recycle my decluttered items that still have life in them.  I love spending only 15 minutes at a time in one closet or bedroom and then donating my items to people who need them.  Its a perfect way to declutter my house as well as blessing others.

I read about a national movement called “Freecycle” in my local paper, and joined a local Freecycle group.  I immediately posted the following on a Facebook: some scrap metal from my garage, a bunch of books, a bag of felt and other scraps of material.  Within an hour, I had about 20 messages from people begging to take my junk away from me. Within two days, it was all gone.  All that was required of me for this magic to happen was that I sent a few messages to the Facebook, I read through the responses, did some quick e-mail correspondence, and finally, put the stuff out on my porch.  It magically disappeared, and I know it found homes with people who really wanted it.  Today I found a homeschooling family that was thrilled to get some really nice classic Mark Twain and Shakespeare volumes for their homeschool library.

I normally would have bagged these things up, put them in my hallway where they would have sat for days, put them in my car and driven around with them for weeks, and then finally made it to the Goodwill.  This has been so exciting that I am prowling around my house (15 minutes at a time) looking for things I can Freecycle. I feel better about decluttering when I know my stuff is blessing somebody else.  Thanks for everything!

Freecycler in Wisconsin