By 
I love a good bargain, but these days I’m finding it hard to actually pay for things! When I need or want something I often find it for free. You might be thinking that I am scrounging or freeloading, but actually I have found that although yes someone is doing you a favour giving you something, actually you are also doing them a favour by taking their unwanted stuff off their hands. It is so easy to go online and find the things I need via Freegle and Freecycle. I’ve had some good finds on these sites and some good finds offline as well such as the things I have detailed below: I have two really active young boys who were bouncing off the walls and the furniture during the long snowy winter months earlier this year. When we saw that someone was giving away this trampette on Freecycle we snapped it up. It really got us through those snowy days and it wasn’t just the kids using it either. Bouncing is quite addictive after a while!
It isn’t all about bouncing in my household and we do like to read a book or two. We are regular visitors to the local libraries and in one of the libraries I noticed that they had an out of action toddler book case. It hadn’t moved for months and one day I decided to ask the question about what they were going to do with it. They were very happy for me to take it. It was missing a wheel and had scribbles all over it, but the wheels and the scribbles came off and it looks great in my younger son’s bedroom! Once the weather started getting better my husband made a herb planter out of pallets he got for free at work – the only problem is that we haven’t lined it with anything and it may have been treated with nasty chemicals, so we need to get round to lining it and starting again. Our latest free item was a bed. To make a bit of extra money we have decided to rent out a room to students but the room needs to be furnished first. Rather than rushing out and buying furniture we turned to Freegle/ Freecycle. It wasn’t long before someone offered up a single bed and off we went to pick it up. Each time I get something old for free I feel so pleased that I have possibly diverted something from landfill and that I may even have something of a better quality than I could have afforded had I gone out and bought it new. I love it and it is definitely the ‘free life’ for me! What do you think about living the ‘free life’ – would you be happy to furnish your home with other people’s cast offs? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
Comments