Why I like and loath Freegal

Freegal is a free and legal group in which you can offer unused items to other members, so that they go to another home rather than landfill. Freegal is simply replacement for the Wilmslow Freecycle I previously recommended

In principal I think this is a great idea. I find it very difficult to take perfectly serviceable items to the tip so they often sit around the house for a long time. Plus after having a lot of hassell selling items on ebay and with all the fees or with anything expensive to post it is often not worthwhile to sell.

Recently I had some items from my grandma's flat to dispose of including a miniature dishwasher. I listed this on Freegal and before I knew it I have 23 people  wanting the item. According to the Freegl principals the idea is to only offer or request not to put in any message about why you need the item. The idea is simply to find homes for items based on offer and desire not to personalise or sway the decision.

There is also Fair offer policy (FOP) to see what responses are received before deciding who to give item(s) to. This gives members on Daily Digest, or those who don't have continual access to the Internet a fair chance to reply.

Here are a selection of the responses;

"I would so much appreciate this please.  Am a single mum & having some help with that chore would make such a difference".

"I'm a carer for my bed bound mum. Your small dishwasher would be really really handy for me when I'm up at her house. I often find myself stood at my mums sink doing the pots, then have to come home and do the dishes at home too. This would be ideal and would save me so much time ".

It puts a lot of pressure on the poster, but how to make a good decision one of the other poster might have similar problems? Therefore I always put all the names into a spreadsheet and use the random function to pick a name, I think that is the fairest way.
 

Circles

The last few weeks have been up and down. There was good news as several of my friends had children or announced they were pregnant. That has been tempered by the deaths of several people, my grandmother died last Friday. In a way at was a release she had been very unwell and was suffering, however it still felt very ghoulish clearing out her flat. This followed the death of Philips father, whoes funerial I had attended Thursday. Then Kath Aunt died, so a sad time at what is normally a happy time of the year.

Last night I went out for a curry with Jo and Paul, was a nice evening good food, nice chat, very relaxing. Paul was in good form telling us about his trip to Sweden and how he has got back into running

I finally got a replacement phone, a Google Nexus 4. I am very happy with it. It zips along much faster than my previous Nexus S, the screen is gorgeous nearly edge to edge in Gorilla Glass. The new version of Android follows the evolution of the operating system, making it slicker and more integrated. The cards feature is a real innovation, Cards dynamically display depending on location and recent searchs. For example if I record an item in my calendar I get a reminder to leave in order to beat the traffic, updated in real time. 

There is still no sign of the Galaxy Note II that Kath sent me, according to the tracking it arrived in the UK on the 4th yet it hasn't moved from the warehouse. Whilst waiting for it, I have sent Kath her Google Nexus 7 to Poland. Unfortunately it developed a fault, so she sent it back to the UK and I returned it to Google and got a replacement. So something tells me that the Note has been lost in transit.