Freecycle Diaries: Serendipity at last

In the final instalment of the Freecycle Diaries, Natasha Lomas clears a ragbag assortment of items from her flat - and pairs up a giant accountant with a giant calculator.

In a last-ditch effort to clear what has rapidly become 'the Freecycle table' (formerly the kitchen table), I decide to try a new strategy.

Posting offerings of one item has proved more than a little demanding - and not just in terms of time - so perhaps a mass listing is the way to go.

Although most people seem to ignore it, Freecycle etiquette asks that users listing multiple items at the same time put them all in one email - in order to keep the numbers of mails down for users who opt for email notification of new posts (which, by the way, you don't have to do. Much better, in my opinion, is to opt out of emails altogether and instead just check your group's messages as and when. This means your inbox won't be forced into Freecycle overdrive).

I assemble the ragbag assortment of items left on the table and compose what sounds like the ingredients for a BBC home makeover show…

4 x TDK FE90 blank cassette tapes (unopened)
3 x clip frames (1 x 6"x4", 2 x 7"x5")
3 x boxes of glass baubles
2 x Sony in-ear headphones (earbuds)
1 x giant calculator (batteries included)
1 x Ikea wooden storage box (pine & hardboard; no lid, 70cmx40cm-ish)
1 x Rolson hardpoint handsaw (12")
1 x 150ml spray can of silver lacquer (not full)
1 x USB mini lava lamp
1 x cable clip set (box of assorted sizes)
1 x 500ml tin of brilliant white eggshell lustre paint (approx half used)

The list could have been much longer - once you get involved in this digital subculture, every unwanted item cluttering your cupboards becomes a potential giveaway. Freecycle really should carry a health warning - I fear addicts are already out there, at large in the community.

Within moments I get an email from someone called Theo: "Hi we just saw your offer and would love to have these items. Please hold them for us and we will collect to suit." Not exactly the response I was expecting and it has a suspicious ring of the generic.

I suspect Theo may be one of the Freecyclers who look to get freebies to sell on - not that there's anything wrong with that per se but it does feel slightly as if it goes against the spirit of the thing. Giving something useful to someone who genuinely wants it feels a little more personal than handing a sack of your stuff to an entrepreneurial stranger. But, as silicon.com reader Paul Seligman points out in a Reader Comment on an earlier diary: "You didn't want it, it finds a good home with someone who does, and it avoids dumping it. So what if someone makes a little bit as a middle man?"

So what indeed. Even so, I decide to give the rest of 'Freecycle Nation' a chance to respond before taking Theo up on his offer to, well, take the lot.

And it isn't long before the requests roll in. Most popular by far is the USB lava lamp - it may be a total trinket but six people are falling over themselves to get their hands on it. The Sony earbuds are also in high demand (unsurprising, in this era of iPod ubiquity), as is the giant calculator and the handsaw (three potential takers each). In a telling sign of a tech in terminal decline, the tapes get altogether less interest with just one tentative enquiry.

My mass listing serves to unearth another aspect of Freecycle: the serial user. I get an email from a familiar name: Dimitris, the Freecycler who picked up the matchbox design proofs I offered a few days before. It's a one-liner expressing his interest, and doesn't make mention of our previous encounter. Some people clearly make a habit of acquiring other people's unwantables. I dread to think what the inside of his flat looks like.

With the Freecycle engine spluttering into life, I decide to spilt the booty between a few takers - more legwork for me but it's a community affair after all.

There's some inevitable overlapping when it comes to what people want but in the end it works out fairly well and - most pleasing of all - no one complains about not getting all the things they've asked for.

A South Ealing dweller called Damien asks for the earbuds, clips frames, lava lamp and calculator.

Next evening Damien rings the doorbell and turns out to be the tallest man in West London and an accountant to boot so says the calculator "should come in handy". As I hand over the goods and the last of the items on the uber list vanish into the night I'm left wondering where else you could so serendipitously pair up a giant accountant with a giant calculator.

Read all the Freecycle Diaries: part one, two, three and four .