Stuff, stuff and more stuff!

Having a clear-out? Cupboards groaning? Don't pass it on to landfill.

Here are some ideas on how to redistribute your 'stuff'.

Charity shops

In Godalming and Farnham there are lots of charity shops on the High Street.  Barnados has a gift aid system so that if you donate to them as well as the proceeds of sale they will recover the gift aid and they write or email you to tell you what your items raised for them

Farnham has an Oxfam Books and Music charity shop.  These aren't available in every town so this is really useful if you have a big cache of books to clear out.  They check the secondhand values on the internet to make sure they get a fair price. 

If you can't think where your closest one is, google on "charity shops" and your local town name.  

Furniture

For the Guildford area, Surrey Furniture Project has a warehouse on the Slyfield estate and a van will collect items from the Guildford Area

For the Waverley area, unfortunately the local authority furniture project has never taken anything we have offered them .  It is located somewhere in Bordon but we have never been able to find it!

For the Woking area, the Community Furniture Store on North Road, Woking supplies furniture to people on low incomes. It accepts selected furniture in good condition.

A wide range of furnishings accepted, often outside the advertised list.

Freecycle and Freegle

Freecycle and Freegle groups (which are similar) match people who have things they want to get rid of with people who can use them. Our goal is to keep usable items out of landfills. By using what we already have on this earth, we reduce consumerism, manufacture fewer goods, and lessen the impact on the earth. Another benefit of using Freecycle/Freegle is that it encourages us to get rid of junk that we no longer need and promote community involvement in the process.

Both organisations are useful for passing on furniture that will not be accepted by charity shops, because its too old to have fire resistant conformity,and electrical goods and odd items like fircones, jamjars and other 'useful' collections.

You can use it to post requests for 'wanted' items, once you have offerred a couple of items on there.

Woking http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WokingFreecycle/

Guildford  Guildford Freecycle group joined the Freegle network when the organisations split

Surrey Heath http://groups.yahoo.com/group/surreyheathfreecycle/

Farnborough and Aldershot http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Freecycle_Farnborough_Aldershot/

Mole Valley http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MoleValleyFreecycle/

Try Ebay

Ebay is now a very easy and effective way to sell useable second hand goods.

If you haven't tried it before, take the plunge.

Payment can be set up using Paypal so there is full protection and they have a very good dispute resolution system, (should it be required).

Bulky items can be advertised for collection only and you would be surpised how well that works in practice.

Ebay