The Incredible Power of Your Buy Nothing Group

Kids are expensive. On average an American family pays $15,000/year for each child they have so when Mrs. Stark and I decided we were going to become parents we knew we needed some solutions for helping to keep costs down. My wife came up with a humdinger: using a movement that already existed on social media to take care of many of the early needs for our kiddo while building community at a critical time we’d need it. All of this and for the right price: $0. How? Mrs. Stark discovered our local Buy Nothing group.

What is the Buy Nothing Movement?

Similer to upcycling or freecycling Buy Nothing groups are focused on exactly that: buying nothing, or as little as possible, in order to reduce consumerism and save money. Powered by social media and existing on platforms like Facebook, Buy Nothing groups allow members of a community to connect with one another to give each other needed goods and services for free. You don’t have to pay to participate, you don’t have to give anything away to participate, you just have to want to participate.

How Buy Nothing Groups Work

One of the wonderful things about Buy Nothing groups is how little effort they take to utilize. You subscribe to your area group on Facebook and monitor posts. There are two types of postings: those in which someone is offering to give something away and those in which someone is seeking something specific from the community.

When you see something posted that you need you simply reply to the post showing your interest. For items in high demand folks typically leave a story as to why they’re the best fit to receive the item, or how it would uniquely benefit them/their family to increase the chances of being selected. If you “win” the poster will connect with you for a pickup time and location. Swing by, pick up the item, and that’s it! You don’t have to interact with anyone face-to-face making things super easy (and a breeze for introverts).

If you’re on the other end, posting an item for someone else to pick up, you review the responses from folks who are interested, select the person/family you think is the best, connect with a time and location for pickup and leave the item outside. There’s no messy handoffs or exchanges like a Craig’s List sale; you really can just “set it and forget it”.

Ethics in Buy Nothing Groupism

There are a few unspoken rules that go with being a part of your local Buy Nothing group but the most important is this: don’t resell items you find on your Buy Nothing group. I love making a dollar on the side as much as the next person but Buy Nothing groups are about building community and supporting your neighbors. It’s a pretty big violation of that trust to troll the Buy Nothing group for free stuff so you can resell it on Craig’s List or somewhere else. Setting aside the moral implications the rewards also aren’t there. You have to dedicate a lot of time looking for items, time posting items, and managing the sales aspect. Eventually someone from the Buy Nothing group is going to figure out what you’ve done and let the group know. Risking ostracizing from your community and lack of access to your Buy Nothing group for a few bucks that balances out to less-than-minimum-wage after you account for the time you spent on everything…it’s not a good play mathematically even if your moral fiber would permit you to do it.

The next most important rule is, “Show up to pick up the things you said you would.” One of the most frustrating parts of the Buy Nothing experience is posting an item many people were excited to receive, selecting a lucky member of your community to receive it, then finding they never showed up to claim it as they said they would. What follows is jumping through hoops trying to reconnect with them for a makeup time or selecting someone else who was interested. This is a big hassle for everyone so don’t flake; instead show up when you commit to do so. The flakier you are and the more bad experiences people have with you the less likely you are to get selected for an item in the future.

Finally don’t give away stuff you wouldn’t be happy to receive yourself. Sure if you’re giving it away you probably no longer have need for it, but in the circumstance where you did need that particular thing would you be comfortable receiving one in the condition you’re giving away? If the answer is, “No,” reconsider posting it to your Buy Nothing group. Items should be in good shape, not gross, and most importantly safe. Be transparent about the state of the item you’re seeking a new owner for and be courteous about the quality of the goods you give away.

Our Experience with Buy Nothing

When my wife first explained the concept of our local Buy Nothing group to me I was pretty skeptical. Who would care to give anything away for free? Surely nothing worthwhile could be on offer? I was also certain I wasn’t interested in literally never buying anything. What I found was something entirely different than my doubts had led me to predict. It turns out when it’s the people you share your community with and you’re supporting one another people do care.

So what have we received and given away on our Buy Nothing group? Like I said at the start of the article today our initial goal was to help defray the costs of a newborn. Because of how quickly babies grow out of clothing in their first year of life we knew we wanted to try to minimize the amount of money we spent on clothes our kiddo might wear for as little as a week. Buy Nothing was amazing for helping out with lots of parents happy to clear out space in their closets by giving away clothes their kids had outgrown. Thanks to some generous gifts at our baby shower and the Buy Nothing group we’ve spent close to $0 on clothes for our little one and even given back by listing the items we no longer need so someone else in the community can benefit.

The second big item we’ve benefited from have been kids’ toys. Little ones are notorious for loving a cardboard box as much as the toy that came in it so spending lots of money on toys wasn’t something we were keen on. Additionally there are a surprising amount of birthday parties and gift opportunities that come up in the first year of a kid’s life and every time you wind up with a few more toys for the little one. We opted to let family buy toys they felt strongly about for things like birthdays, pick up the occasional box of toys from Buy Nothing, and buy a few very important toys that meant something to us. I felt confident we could keep the spending on these items low, but I wasn’t willing to sacrifice our kiddo’s enjoyment of childhood to save a few bucks. I needn’t have worried; it turns out “a box of my kids’ old toys” is about the number one thing that comes up on a Buy Nothing group. We’ve picked up so many boxes and donated so many back that our little one has had a constant stream of “new” toys to play with on a quarterly basis. We keep the ones that are favorites and send the rest on to other families who might prefer them, including some of the ones we bought that turned out to be duds in the eyes of our little one.

Mrs. Stark, being the avid Buy Nothing user in our household, has utilized a clothing exchange organized through the group to freshen up her wardrobe. That’s a more formalized version of the toy exchange we’re a de facto part of for our kiddo; every so many weeks you pick up a set of tubs filled with clothing. You try on and keep what you like, then donate anything from your closet you’re not happy with anymore or otherwise don’t want to keep. A few weeks later the clothing exchange comes back around to you with an entirely new set of clothes and you repeat. It’s a pretty ingenious means of freshening up one’s wardrobe without having to spend hundreds on new clothes.

We’ve also given away a lot of things we had that we weren’t using anymore. When our pet goldfish passed away we found ourselves with a host of fish supplies we no longer needed: a 30 gallon tank, filter, pump, food, cleaning supplies; these were all goods we no longer needed after deciding we didn’t want to manage having a fish anymore (a kid and a cat are enough!) and they found a very happy home to a neighbor who was looking to upsize their tank for a growing fish family.

In addition to our fish tank we gave away cases and cases of printer paper I had left over from a previous side gig maximizing Staples Rewards (an article for a different day). We had about ten cases of paper and were surprised at how many people were looking for them for stocking their classrooms, doing arts and crafts at home, and helping their small business. It was a rewarding feeling to clear out the storage space in our home from paper I’d been meaning to get rid of for some time and to do so in a way that positively impacted people in our community.

Toys, clothes, paper, fish supplies, games, even tomatoes from our garden are all things we’ve given away to our Buy Nothing group. We’ve received clothes and toys for our baby, childproofing materials from a family whose kids had aged out of worrying about outlet plugs, baked goods, and more. Over time we’ve found ourselves picking things up from the same neighbors and giving things out to the same folks too. That in turn has led to building community and connecting with our community in an unexpected way we hadn’t previously despite living in the same home for three years. As a small towner from the Midwest that’s my favorite part of the whole experience: building a sense of community with your neighbors that leads to feeling like you’ve got each others’ backs.

Getting Involved

So how do you get involved with your local Buy Nothing group? It’s easy! Search your area’s group on Facebook (try typing, “MY CITY NAME Buy Nothing”). You can also read more here at the Buy Nothing Project. If you’re from a region that doesn’t have a Buy Nothing group yet? You can start one! It’s as easy as getting a group going on social media and letting your friends know about it. Stick with curating posts and spreading the word and soon you’ll find the community runs itself somewhat organically as people find the utility in having a community resource as powerful as the Buy Nothing group.