Carrie Whitaker reports… Michelle Boyles realized a lifelong dream when she and her husband opened the Tea Cozy Cottage 3½ years ago in a historic building on Wooster Pike in Mariemont.

The couple from Pleasant Ridge transformed the building almost all by themselves into a tea house that serves food and tea to groups two weekends a month. Along the way, they had some help.

“We couldn’t have done it without our friends or Freecycle,” Boyles said. “It and Web sites like it made it affordable for us.”

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Randall Hunhoff reports on Arkansas Freecycle groups and other ways to give…

Go to freecycle. org and click your way to the Arkansas sites.

The carefully moderated Little Rock Metro group has more than 5, 000 members. Just about anything can be given away (it’s a child-friendly site that bans guns, pornography and alcohol ). Recent offerings ranged from a chaise lounge to scrap aluminum. The process is designed to keep the giver in control. If you’re really having difficulty parting with your stuff, you could possibly negotiate visitation rights with the taker.

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Arlene spends a lot of time on freecycle.com. Here’s how it works: you can either post stuff you don’t want or look for something you might need. And get this: it’s all free!

Luggage sets, a computer cart, and even jewelry. Or lawn chairs. OK, they’re missing a few straps but Arlene says, somebody might be able to use it.

“Because these things are free and they go fast,” said Arlene.

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Bill Berlow Blogs…

Got stuff you want to get rid of that someone else could put to good use? Want something that someone else might not need anymore?

Have I got a deal for you.

If you have a computer and a little patience, the 3,300-member TallyFreecycle group is waiting for you to join its Yahoo-based “gifting” network.

TallyFreecycle is part of a growing international movement that began in Arizona five years ago. The Freecycle Network now claims more than 4 million members worldwide who are part of 3,500 community organizations.

Click Here to Read More on Tally’s own Freecycle Group

You only have to visit any public rubbish tip to see the huge number of perfectly useful items that are thrown away by our consumer society.

Rather than joining the many who let these goods go to waste, selling them on instead can be straightforward, and means they won’t end up taking up space in our already overstretched landfill sites. - Melanie Wright, Telegraph.co.uk

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Seeing how this worked so successfully, I resolved to see if the miracle could be repeated for the other two problem floors. I placed a notice on the local pages of the Freecycle website, and Bob’s your uncle, a day later I got a message from a man in Vauxhall saying that he had just removed a house-full of laminate flooring and that I was welcome to it.

There was more than enough for both bathroom and lobby and it now gives off a lovely warm tone. We grabbed the opportunity to install some wood-fibre insulation board certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) beneath all of the new flooring, which means that, in addition to my lovely new flooring, I now have a cosy barrier between my bare feet and the concrete that lies beneath.

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Kathy Ann Purdy of Beverly used to be a yard-sale devotee; now she’s a Freecycle fiend. Purdy was working on a house renovation a few years ago when she heard about the website - “a place to give or receive what you have and don’t need or what you need and don’t have,” according to the site. She went online and scooped up free beds, furniture, new carpet, and a stove, among other things.

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Web sites

FREECYCLE.ORG

Have you outgrown your Chucks or your favorite Abercrombie T-shirt? Have a bunch of CDs you no longer listen to? Want to redecorate your room for cheap? Need 100 bottle caps for an art project? Offer good but no longer wanted stuff for free on Freecycle and get cool, gently-used stuff for free. Free membership required.

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A nonprofit organization specializing in reusing unwanted items is Freecycle.org. It allows members to give and receive items for free. I’ve never used this service, but I found many local members in the Chicago area, so it seems to have a strong following.

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Freecycle, a give-away site that originated in the United States, works a bit differently. Participants use a Yahoo group to offer items that they are ready to give away. There is no expectation of payment. The reward comes through the clean conscience of knowing that an object has been given to a new owner instead of adding to the landfill problem.

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