my community channel

Now that I'm a proud home home-owner (of a very empty house but still a very nice house) I've been looking around trying to get some bits of furniture with my tiny budget.

I want to share with you all a brilliant gem of advice that I've learnt. Everywhere you look there's cheap catalogue shops offering the lastest designs for OK prices, but lets face it, most of it is MDF or chip board and probably is only going to last a couple of months. A good friend of mine told me about a group called Freecycle. Everything is free. Free to join, free to advertise your stuff & free to access. There's even a group in my home town! Freecycle groups match people who have things they want to get rid of with people who can use them. Their 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 is that it encourages us to get rid of junk that we no longer need and promote community involvement in the process.So kiss goodbye to credit crunch blues and start hunting round for stuff for your homes. Just please don't take all the bookcases in the Bedfordshire area!

Have a look for yourselves at www.uk.freecycle.org/