Just a quick post today to give a shout-out to the “hyperlocal social networking service”, Nextdoor. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a free, online “neighborhood town square”, a place where you can share information with other Nextdoor members who live in or near your neighborhood (or beyond, depending on your “settings”.) If you already are a Nextdoor member, you may know that sadly during times of national elections, too many people have used it to rant and rave about this or that candidate or this or that platform (at least that’s been true in my community), but I think the real beauty of it is when people share valuable information and come together to help each other, such as inform each other about crimes occurring and power outages; help neighbors find lost dogs or even lost children; announce a garage sale, local event or review a new nearby restaurant; offer up a need that someone might be able to help with; or sell or give away something that someone else could use. It’s a place where many feel-good opportunities for reuse can happen.
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For example, one day I saw a posting from a woman who wrote that she’d recently gotten home from having foot surgery but couldn’t afford to buy a boot that could help her get around easier; it turned out we had an orthopedic boot in her exact size that had been sitting in a bathroom cabinet for years. I was happy to give it to her for free (and free up some cabinet space!) and she was thrilled to receive it.
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Another feel-good moment happened after I finally got tired of seeing birds eat all the figs on our fig tree every year and leave the rest to rot on the ground (none of my immediate family members were big fig fans back then), so I learned from a friend about the best moment to harvest them before the birds could—and I posted on Nextdoor: “Does anyone want some free figs from our fig tree?” I had many takers. I personally delivered the figs, met a lot of neighbors and felt like the “fig Santa Claus”. As a way to say thanks, one woman made a jar of fig jam for my family (it was delicious!). The next year, I let her bring a ladder to the tree and harvest all she wanted.
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Yet another time, not too long ago, I was going through a bunch of my daughters’ costumes/dress-up clothes from their childhood, stuff they had long ago quit wearing themselves but that we’d saved “‘til the bitter end” in case they wanted to take them along on babysitting jobs. Stuff that had missed being sold in garage sales. Once the girls were in college and we were moving to a different house, it was time to purge, so I posted on Nextdoor about the small collection of sparkly shoes, tiaras, fairy wings, etc. that I had available for free, and a grandmother was delighted to take them off my hands. She wrote to me later and said that when her granddaughter came for a visit, she loved playing with them. I was so glad they went to a good home.
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I could go on and on about more feel-good Nextdoor “reuse” stories that I’ve been involved in, but I think I’ve made the point. If you’re not on Nextdoor, sign up, and if you don’t like seeing all the news that comes and goes on it, set your account preferences to receive only the type of e-mail notifications you desire. If you wish, you don’t have to receive any e-mails—you can just log into Nextdoor whenever you feel like taking a look—or whenever you want to sell or give away something (but, I think the less you use it, the less chance you have of helping someone). And, there’s a Nextdoor app for those that like that type of convenience.
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To see what things people are giving away or requesting at any given time, click on “Free” and “In search of” in the Nextdoor categories once you’re on your neighborhood site, and you can filter further by whether you want to see just things in your neighborhood, surrounding neighborhoods, or beyond. Also, sometimes items and item requests show up in the general news stream and aren’t categorized.
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I hope you find Nextdoor as powerful a connection and reuse tool as I’ve found it to be!
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Have you heard of Nextdoor? Are you a member? If so, have you ever gotten any good information or “stuff” thanks to Nextdoor, or given away or sold anything through the site? Please share!