gift giving anti-meme

[totient]

There's a meme going around whose intent is to encourage crafty gift-giving. I have plenty of things already, mostly think that is also true of most of my friends, and am trying to make there be fewer things in the world, not more. Part of making there be fewer things is to make it so that the things there are are more appropriately distributed. To that end, I'm making an effort to put some of the things that have landed in my life back in the thing-stream. Sometimes that's looking at some object and realizing that it would make some particular friend of mine happy, or would be useful for a nonprofit. Sometimes it's selling something cheaply (so far, at a yard sale or by consigning it to someone that's going to the MIT swapfest, but I'm planning to dive into Craigslist as well). I had an excess of window envelopes a couple of months ago and played inverse-steal-stuff-from-work with them. I give things to Goodwill or Big Brothers/Big Sisters. I know people who have "free stuff" piles in their houses, or who post giveaway items to their livejournals.

I'm posting here mostly to encourage myself to keep doing this, but also in hopes of fostering a larger gift-economy and promote simplification for its environmental impact. Maybe someone reading this can turn it into a meme and get it out there; this post is not quite that.

Comments

hmmm...

[cthulhia]

how about the gift of an hour of company or otherwise helping you sort through a pile of potential outcruft? harder to schedule, but... probably better. (o;

[skreeky]

Hmm. I have actually just set out the Biannual Empty Large Box labeled "To Donate" in preparation for the seasonal closet/attic exchange and general spring cleaning.

It could be cool if we can think up a catchy way to make it an online meme, but how? Lists of "What I gave away today?"

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I have a pile of books (mostly technical) that I want to get rid of, but I don't want to dump them at Goodwill (where they will probably rot) and I don't want to type in all the titles to post at Freecycle (or wherever). Not sure what to do.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

take a photo of the spine side of the stack and post that to freecycle?

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Post "I have a pile of technical books, must take all" to freecycle. Someone like me will pick them up to sell what they can on half.com or the like and then give away the rest.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Good idea, thanks.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Hm, I guess I was assuming that if unemployed me didn't have the time/patience to deal with half.com, then no one else would, but it's worth a shot, thanks.

Different hobbies :)

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Different people have different threshholds; some people knit, I list books on paperbackswap & half.com. Then later I get to do a cut and paste project (wrapping up the book) and a walk (delivering it to the post office).

Also, someone with a barcode reader can enter a pile of books pretty darn quickly.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

This post inspired me to freecycle the pile of prerecorded videotapes we had sitting around that we didn't want anymore, so I'm pretty happy about that!