Well, hello!
Many of you are new here, thanks to a Washington Post story by Maura Judkis, “Buy Nothing Is Everything,” in which I was quoted talking about wearing underpants I found in a box on the curb. Really, there’s no better way to make an appearance in a national newspaper of record!
As a writer and reporter who has interviewed many people, I have to say it was humbling to be on the other side of the experience. I was so nervous. I went into the interview with Judkis ready with talking points — most of which I forgot in the moment — about community-building, my anxiety over climate change and how Buy Nothing is mutual aid, not charity.
It’s a fun story about the psychology of why we love free shit, even when it is literally free guinea pig poop. She focuses on the weird, broken, bizarre things that people will give away and others will happily take. I laughed out loud several times. Go read it if you haven’t already.
For those of you who are new subscribers: welcome, and thank you for being here. I started this Substack newsletter last summer because I needed a place to talk about my Buy Nothing obsession and I didn’t know where else to go.
It all started when my family moved to Milwaukee in 2021 and I discovered my neighborhood’s Buy Nothing group. The group does not set geographic boundaries, is unaffiliated with the official Buy Nothing Project network and has 8,100 members and counting.
I'm a seasoned Craigslister, thrifter, scrapper and Dumpster diver, but this Buy Nothing group is next level. The more I got into it, I noticed that this community, this economy, seemed to be flying under the radar of mainstream analysis and discussion.
When Buy Nothing does make the news, it’s usually a cute story about neighbors sharing sourdough starter.
What I was encountering seemed bigger than that. People aren’t just trading homemade leftovers or weird, broken things with little to no monetary value (although there’s plenty of that). People are trading new-in-package stuff, too. Unworn clothes. Good furniture. At this point, nearly my entire wardrobe is off Buy Nothing. Every week, the percentage of things in our home off Buy Nothing climbs higher. And I know I’m far from the only one living like this.
I would like to see this thrift economy treated as legitimate, consequential and noteworthy. I think it is slowly starting to happen.
As I wrote in my first Curb Alert…
I spend a lot of time thinking about thrifting and the sharing economy — the real sharing economy, not Uber and Airbnb — and how it feels like the only way forward environmentally and financially in this era of climate crisis, inequality and social disconnection.
I also recognize that this is about ~stuff~. Am I a Buy Nothing girl in a material world? Yes. Am I material girl in a Buy Nothing world? Also yes. (Madonna knows what’s up.)
So I started Curb Alert to dig into Buy Nothing, curb shopping, alley finds, Craigslisting and other forms of everyday thrifting.
My posting schedule thus far has been inconsistent … but hope springs eternal. My goal is to send out one newsletter per week, with no more than 10 minutes of reading. (There’s been some soul-searching lately about how we’re reaching “peak newsletter,” but I think the problem is that many newsletters, even some of my favorites, publish too often and too long. Three-thousand words on a Tuesday morning? Who has the time!)
More thrifting in the news
Recently I set some google alerts for “Buy Nothing,” “Craigslist” and “freecycle,” and it’s been helping me find stories like these:
• A look at the Freecycle community in Half Moon Bay, California. One member says the quick-moving items in the group include organizing supplies, canning jars, stereo equipment, high-end shampoo and musical instruments, “except pianos.” (That tracks. I had to pay someone to haul away my piano.)
• A personal finance columnist for Toronto’s The Globe and Mail muses, “Second-hand shopping was a hot trend even before interest rates and inflation soared, but now it’s become something bigger. A financial survival tactic, maybe?” Maybe!
• Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, made a fortune with the website and is now one of the biggest philanthropic donors in the U.S. In an interview (video here), the 70-year-old talks about being “the Forrest Gump of the internet” and why he’s focusing his giving to “the here and now” (as opposed to building a legacy foundation) “because I think our species and our civilization need to get through the next 20 years or so.” We also learn that he loves birds, has a painting of his rescue pigeon Ghostface Killah on his mantle and suspects that “pigeons may become our replacement species.”
• Buy Nothing is going strong in Detroit: “We all want to be a part of a community. The whole ‘it takes a village’ to raise a child, I think it pertains to children but it also pertains to being human and feeling like you have community.”
• In Chicago, a Buy Nothing member says, “If you're mindful and patient enough, you can furnish your entire home without spending any money.”
• The patience needed for home-decorating via the curb and Buy Nothing is also discussed in this story out of Seratoga Springs, New York: “You have to be OK with your house not looking like what you’d find in magazines. Letting go of that idea of perfection was huge. … I don’t have to be at the end or the beginning. I can allow this all to grow and develop as I go.”
• The NY Times has a profile of two moms who started an online shop to help other busy parents find secondhand kids’ clothes. The shop sells clothes in age/style-specific lots and is aimed at Millennial moms: “They’re the Amazon mom. The swipe-up-and-buy-type mom.”
• And, finally, the NY Times has this photo essay about a group of mostly queer skaters in Nigeria who get together on the regular to thrift clothes at a market in Lagos: “You have to explore the market to get what you really want. And sometimes, what we buy doesn’t always make sense. We have to figure out how to style it. We're like, ‘It’s going to make sense one day.’”
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That’s it for this week. Speaking of patience in interior decoration, I have been finding some longtime wish-list items on Buy Nothing lately, and I can’t wait to share them.
In the meantime, stay adventurous and keep thrifting.