Over the weekend, I put out three free boxes in order to rid myself of some accumulated junk: books, DVD’s, old computer stuff, some clothes and house-hold items. When I mentioned it to a friend, she said “What’s a free box?” So I figured I would enlighten people here on the world wide web who’ve never heard of such a thing.

A free box is just a cardboard box with a bunch of stuff you don’t want anymore (not garbage, but good useful stuff) which you put outside on the sidewalk or on the corner and just write “FREE” on it in a black marker. It’s pretty simple. People in the Northwestern part of the United States do this on a very regular basis. I used to walk around my neighborhood in Seattle (Wallingford) on a Sunday and you could find all kinds of cool stuff in free boxes. I’ve also heard that there are hippy towns in Northern California which have a full-on *town* free box in some centrally-located public space. People will just go and drop in clothes or whatever, and then anyone else can come over and find whatever they want at no cost.

I got in touch a few months back with a guy from Baltimore named Matt Warfield, who took this concept and turned it into a massive project called the Baltimore Free Store, which is like an open-air thrift store (charity shop, if you’re in the UK?) or flea market, except that everything is free. Warfield’s organization became successful enough that it got funding from George Soros’ Open Society Initiative.

The concept of a free box is hardly world-changing on its own, but it’s a nice way to recycle value within your immediate community and to break yourself of this obsession that you have to recoup your losses somehow by clinging endlessly to or by re-selling for a pittance all the pointless crap you’ve accumulated over the years. It’s also cool if you can set a positive example with something like this which inspires other people in your neighborhood to maybe follow suit. It’s like a sign advertising that you’re awesome and inviting other people to be awesome. Posting a notice to your local Craigslist with an address and description of your free box will help you move your products faster. And once you’re rid of all that stuff you no longer need, you’ll wonder why you held onto it for so long to begin with!