I appreciate that the Buy Nothing Project adds respectability and structure to trading free stuff, but can we take a moment to appreciate the absolute delight and anarchy that was Craigslist at its prime?
And, to be clear, Craigslist is still craigslisting, but on a smaller scale. Here’s an ad I saw last year in the Milwaukee free section:
I’ve been using Craigslist to buy-sell-trade since the early 2000s, in addition to finding roommates, jobs and dates. Alas, my transactions before 2007 are lost to time and a weak memory. I deleted the email accounts I used back then so I have no primary-source documentation.
But by searching through my current email addresses and old Facebook posts to jog my memory, I can mostly reconstruct a timeline of Craigslist shopping highlights after that.
2007-2010
This era is light on the trading of goods. I used Craigslist primarily for secret Rants & Raves posts, apartment sublet searches, browsing Missed Connections, buying concert tickets, the odd Personals query, and finding people to interview for stories I was writing.
Being in my 20s, I just didn’t have that much stuff back then. I didn’t have kids to clothe or a house to decorate. I used a packing box wrapped in a sheet as a table. I assure you I was unaware of the term “Mid-Century Modern.”
Tragically, the things I did give away or sell were sometimes very sentimental, like a big bag of old zines from the 90s and a collection of musical instruments I’d been holding onto since I was a teenager. Others, not so much: I posted a Cost Cutters’ tanning card in the Craigslist free section in 2008 and sent it via snail mail to the woman who responded to my ad.
I don’t remember using Craigslist consistantly to buy-sell-trade until 2010, when I moved from Madison to Atlanta with nothing more than what my then-boyfriend and I could cram into a Toyota Corolla.
Almost everything in our new apartment in Atlanta came from Craigslist as I feverishly responded to ads with titles like “DIVORCE SALE - EVERYTHING!!!”
April 2011
Elevan months later, after our relationship fell apart and I decided to move back north to Chicago, I was stuck getting rid of it all. I made the decision to move at the last minute, so once again: Craigslist fever in Hot-lanta.
"I was married 27 years. He forged my name and stole my money. Now I'm in my own little apartment,” a 60-something woman told me, as I helped pack an end table and two broken chairs into her car.
Another person who came to pick through the detritus of my apartment, probably sensing what a mess I was, told me she was praying for me. She offered to channel light through my "main soul" third eye and gave me a box of Ritz Munchables pretzel rounds. I ate them.
I posted 27 ads to Craigslist in the last week of April 2011 alone, with increasing desperation. On April 30, I posted an ad titled “Everything in this pic is free (except the cat).”
That night I posted again, my final Craigslist ad in Atlanta: “Curb alert.”
August 2011
I was jobless and living in a third-floor Chicago studio apartment with no A/C. One restless night I charged a 40-pack bag of Tyson frozen chicken nuggets to my credit card. I ate about seven nuggets, probably washed down with wine from the Walgreens down the street. I didn’t even like them. Disgusted with myself for being so wasteful, I posted the opened bag of nuggets in the Craigslist free section.
The next morning, a happy guy on a bike was standing outside the door to my apartment building. "I'll take the nuggets. I'm dead broke and hungry," he had emailed me the night before.
Today I googled his name. He was a student back in 2011, but now he has a PhD, lives in Europe and lectures at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I can't help but hope I played a very small — nugget-sized?! — part in his success.
November 2011
After getting a job in Wisconsin, I was packing up for another move. But before I left Chicago, I had one more memorable Craigslist transaction: I paid $1,800 cash for a boat-sized 1990 Mercedes Benz. This turned out to be a supremely stupid vehicle to own in rural Wisconsin, but I drove off thinking I was a P-I-M-P. Sigh.
August 2014
By now, I was back living in Madison. I found an incredibly cheap room (via Craigslist, of course) in an old 2-unit duplex in a great area of the city. The downside? The landlord was absentee and, for years and maybe decades, the place had been occupied by a steady stream of irresponsible people who all appeared to have left in a hurry. The rotatation of subletters in and out meant the place hadn’t been fully cleaned in a long time. Example: I found a jar of moldy dill pickles in the fridge. How long does it take pickles to mold?
In the summer of 2014, I started posting for free on Craigslist all the abandoned stuff I found in the three-bedroom apartment and in the mildewy dirt-floor basement we shared with the downstairs neighbors, including a:
vintage 1970s Montgomery Ward sewing machine that came in its own suitcase
child’s size violin
very long silk robe
pair of kid’s ice skates
large quantity of unexpired Plan B birth control (this Craigslist ad got flagged, unsurprisingly, and I think I eventually ended up throwing it all away)
January 2015
“I know I need an intervention, but today's Craigslist free section haul — originally for a wooden filing cabinet — yielded not only the filing cabinet but a versatile TV stand, a round etched mirror, a quality comforter, three houseplants and Tina Fey's ‘Bossypants.’ All free. Plus a promise to deliver a cat tree to my house tomorrow for $50,” I posted to Facebook.
My Craigslisting was ramping up. Sometimes I bought and sold stuff, but I was discovering that trading in free stuff is usually more rewarding than the hassle of buying and selling.
June 2018
Now massively pregnant (and no longer living in that apartment in Madison), I was busy clearing room for the arrival twin babies. I went on a Craigslist decluttering spree, most memorably selling a stripper pole left behind in our garage.
January 2019
The thing about twin babies is you don’t sleep. I convinced myself I would score a few more precious hours of sleep if we just had the right mattress. So in a sleep-deprived stupor we bought a new mattress from a fast-talking salesman at one of those shady mattress-clearance warehouses.
Our old memory-foam mattress went in the Craigslist free section. The woman who showed up to haul it away stuffed it into the back of her Kia Soul like a taco.
April 2021
This is where most of my Craigslisting ends. We were getting ready to move to Milwaukee, where I soon discovered Buy Nothing.
But before we moved, we had a piano to get rid of. I tried and I tried to give it away free, but there were no takers and we were on a deadline to get it out of the house.
Finally, a guy responded to my Craigslist ad: "I'll haul it away for $100.”
We took him up on that offer.
He backed up to our front door in a dented pickup truck filled with old junk and Mountain Dew cans. The vehicle was so beat up he had to wrestle with pliers to open the tailgate. I'm amazed he managed to get the thing loaded. Moral of the story is that offering to haul away the pianos that people post in the Craigslist free section is an enterprising way to make money.
What happened to that piano? His answers were vague. Unfortunately, it probably became scrap metal and bonfire wood.
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If you’re new here and looking for more on “cheap-free-found thrifting” (I need a better term), you can peruse my older posts here. I started this substack last year in part to connect with other extreme thrifters, so let’s talk!
Until next time, friends, stay adventurous and keep thrifting.