Spent the whole xmas and run up to the new year in the bathroom…. renovating!

Real quality 12 days with dad, demolishing the bathroom which hadn’t even seen a lick of paint since we moved in 17 years ago, preparing the walls, plumbing and electrics, and soon to have the new bath, sink, and all the accessories fitted in.

For the past few years, as we had a bathroom downstairs, the upstairs bathroom was used as a ‘temporary’ storage solution for all the pieces of furniture we no longer needed in the other rooms or were thinking we may be able to pass on to relatives.

When we had to eventually clear out the bathroom, there were two big pieces of furniture that ended up in my bedroom – temporarily of course! We could have either smashed them apart and taken them to the dump yard, sold them, or given them away. They were quite old, but not antiques, so unlikely that we could have sold the chest of drawers and TV stand. Smashing them and taking them to the dump yard was not a good eco option.

We Freecycle’d it! Sunday afternoon I put up a message stating “Offered: Chest Of 5 Drawers & TV Bench (HA7 Belmont Circle)” and gave details of what I was giving away. Within an hour, I received an email from a dude named George who wanted to collect these off me, to take for his daughter who had just moved into a council flat and could do with some basic furniture. I dropped George a note back to arrange that he could collect them the next day (today, Monday).

How cool is that!? My first ever Freecycle experience, that saved me the effort of demolishing this ‘no-longer-needed’ furniture, the hassle of taking it to the dump yard, lightening my carbon / karmic footprint as the furniture would have been dumped into a landfill, and giving me an opportunity to pass something on to someone who it would be better used by.

Check out www.freecycle.org. You can find your local group there (wherever you are in the world), sign up with the group for free, and post up a message that states what you want to give away and your location. Then if someone takes an interest in it, they’ll get in touch and can collect it from you (i.e. take it off your hands!)

Now to find someone to take a pair walking sticks off my hands!