The neverending quest: Where to store all my stuff | Battle Creek Enquirer - www.battlecreekenquirer.com - Battle Creek, Mich.

When we moved to Battle Creek, the boys were on their own. You’d think we had less stuff after we gave them all the used furniture.
Pfth.
It took three truckloads and trips to get all our stuff here because we miscalculated how much stuff, or crap as Joe calls it, we actually had.
Hey, but it’s good crap.
By this time, I discovered the wonderful world of Freecycle.com, a Web site that allows you to post your stuff free to anyone who wants it instead of filling the landfills with it. I’ve downsized a lot through the site and have donated a great deal of my stuff, especially my books.

By: Sue Jopek
battlecreekenquirer.com
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ou Consommer pour vivre ?
Au Nouvel An 2006, une poignée de riverains de la baie de San Francisco ont formé un voeu particulier…
Un article Jean-Michel Dumay à lire dans le journal “Le Monde”

Unconsumption - New York Times

Getting new stuff can feel really good. Most everybody knows that. Most everybody also knows — particularly in the aftermath of the consumption-frenzy holiday season — that utility can fade, pleasure can be fleeting and the whole thought-that-counts thing is especially ephemeral. Apart from the usual solution to this problem (more new stuff!), it’s worth pondering whether getting rid of stuff can ever feel as good as getting it.

A few years ago, a self-described tree-hugger in Tucson named Deron Beal was working for a nonprofit that focused on recycling as a way to minimize what was going into local landfills. While plenty of people were willing, even eager, to get rid of things they no longer wanted but that weren’t really trash, finding people who wanted those things was a challenge. Beal set up a Yahoo Groups mailing list, hoping to create a giveaway marketplace where people could list usable items and others could lay claim to them and then come pick them up. The mailing list became the basis for Freecycle, a Web-enabled network of about 3,900 such e-mail groups, each dedicated to a local community and managed by a volunteer moderator, and claiming 2.9 million participants in more than 70 countries. One of the largest Freecycle groups, with 25,000 members, is for New York City.

By ROB WALKER
New York Times
nytimes.com

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S.F. group enjoys shopping sabbatical - Yahoo! News

The San Francisco group, by contrast, exempted food, essential toiletries like toothpaste and shampoo, underwear and other purchases that fell under the categories of health and safety from their pledge.

But perhaps because its members included middle-class professionals who could afford to shop recreationally, their cause caught on. Nearly 3,000 people have joined a user group Perry set up on Yahoo so participants could swap goods and tips.

Besides thrift stores and garage sales, participants found a wealth of free or previously owned merchandise in online classifieds and sites where people post stuff they want to get rid of, such as http://www.freecycle.org

By LISA LEFF, Associated Press
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