Sometimes Free Is A Great Deal (For Everyone)

You’ve probably heard that we love craigslist.  Love it.  We’ve bought and sold a bunch of stuff on craigslist over the years.  But sometimes what we’re selling has no value.  And not only that, sometimes our stuff is such a liability that giving it away for free is a great deal.  Hear me out.

We’re remodeling out kitchen.  There are existing cabinets that we no longer need screwed into and wedged onto our walls, but we can’t pitch them in our dumpsters (against condo rules and they’re too big anyway) and we don’t have the skills to take them down carefully.  Getting them removed professionally will cost us $1,600 — more than it will cost to hang the new ones.  Enter craigslist free.

Sure, our cabinets have some value.  Somebody may pay some amount of money for them given enough time.  But we don’t have a lot of time, and we know that they’re going to cost us $1,600 if we don’t do something about them.  Giving them away for free is a great deal.  We get rid of our cabinets, they don’t go into a landfill, and somebody scores new (to them) cabinets for their kitchen.  Win-win-win.

But it’s not without its complications.  It can be tough to find good, free labor.  It took us three tries, but the upper cabinets are gone.  Just the lowers remain, but before they go, I need to figure out how to finagle a free plumber.