Where do my clients’ items go?
One of the most gratifying parts of working as a professional organizer (besides of course helping improve my clients’ quality of life through decluttering and setting up organizational systems) is being able to redistribute and rehome items throughout my community, ensuring that these objects and materials are actually given new life and don’t just end up in a landfill.
When I have the time and energy to make dedicated posts, I love giving stuff away through my local neighborhood Buy Nothing Facebook Group! If you’re not familiar with it, The Buy Nothing Project, started over a decade ago, “offers people a way to give and receive, share, lend, and express gratitude through a worldwide gift economy network in which the true wealth is the web of connections formed between people.” You can find Facebook groups for each specific neighborhood that encourages hyper-local gifting, and there is also a dedicated Buy Nothing mobile app.
During the dry season, when I have large amounts of stuff to give away, I often have a recurring free pile at the curb in front of my house. On days when the pile is really big, there have been multiple people looking through and taking stuff all at the same time. One time I was buying some beer for my partner at the corner store, and the cashier insisted I take it for free – she said, “This one is on us! We have gotten so many awesome things out of your free pile and we just wanted to return the favor!”
For specific types of items that aren’t well suited to freeboxing, I have found various places and organizations in my local area that I like to donate to. The other week, I was very excited to have been able to make several different donation dropoffs in one day all by bike (using my trusty cargo bike trailer)! These include Good Junk Sanctuary, Post Mabone’s Tiny Things Exchange, and the SE Community Free Store. Read on to learn more about each of them!
Good Junk Sanctuary
Good Junk Sanctuary Pop-up Event – getting crafting items to the community for free!
Good Junk Sanctuary is a creative reuse center that connects donated arts and crafts supplies that might otherwise enter the waste stream with artists in the local community. I’m very glad that it exists, as it serves as a way for me to rehome items my clients might otherwise throw away because thrift stores wouldn’t be able to resell them. I’ve been able to donate fabric, ribbons, felt, pens, pencils, markers, crayons, office supplies, paper, notepads, gift wrapping materials, tiles, tie-dye kits, sticker books, buttons, pins, coloring books, old calendars and magazines, erasers, stencils, and more! Good Junk’s sister organization is the Reborn Church of Craft, “a secular, weekly maker/mender/fixer meet-up” open to anyone interested in participating. You can read more about Good Junk and the Reborn Church of Craft on their website or in this 2023 article from The Bee.
Post Mabone’s Tiny Things Exchange
If you’ve never seen something like this before, the closest comparison would be a Little Free Library, except it’s for small objects! This has been a great place for me to bring items from clients that would not normally be able to be taken by regular thrift stores like Goodwill because they are just too small or insignificant to be resold. So whenever I have clients who are decluttering their children’s belongings, I’m always happy to say that I have somewhere I can take all the tiny things that they might otherwise just chuck in the trash! (“Post Mabone” is the name of the giant skeleton that lives in the yard at this house year-round.)
You can check out their Instagram here (if you’re also into Halloween decorations, then you’re in for a treat!).
And if you want to learn about more cool free curbside exchanges around Portland, be sure to check out Sidewalk Joy!
Community Free Store
The SE Community Free Store is a volunteer-led effort to distribute resources to unhoused folks in need. They hold outdoor free store events every Friday afternoon in Southeast Portland. Items including clothing and accessories, hygiene supplies, blankets, pillows, and camping gear are all available for folks to take for free. The store also provides free hot meals as well as shelf-stable food and drinks for folks to take with them. The most recent time I brought clothing and pillows that my clients were giving away to the SE store, people started picking up items pretty much immediately after I set them down / hung them on the rack! So I’m very pleased to know that my clients’ items are going to folks who can really use them, for free!
Check them out on Instagram here. And you can learn more about other independently operated Community Free Stores around Portland here.
And I wanted to shout out one other place I bring clients’ items:
Free Geek
For electronics, my go-to place is Free Geek. This organization has been around since 2000, with the goal to “divert technology that would otherwise be recycled or thrown away, refurbish it, and give it back to our community at no or low cost.” They accept electronics donations from the public Wednesdays through Saturdays, 11am–4pm at their location in inner Southeast Portland. The organization repairs donated computers and other devices and provides them to community members in need, along with education in digital literacy skills. Given the hugely destructive impact of e-waste on the planet, (according to Free Geek’s website,“70% of overall toxic waste in America is through e-waste”), I’m very glad to be able to take my clients’ unwanted or broken old computers, mobile phones, printers, keyboards, etc. to a place that will responsibly recycle or redistribute them.
Feeling inspired to downsize and get your unwanted items to new loving homes? Schedule a free consult with me and we can team up to make it happen!
Note: This blog post was written exclusively by me, a human! I refuse to contribute to the “slop” that is clogging up the internet these days. I won’t even include the words to explicitly describe what I’m referring to here in case that gets picked up by a search engine, but I have a feeling you’ll know what I’m talking about. ;)
