Free stuff in front gardens

[FourChimneys]

I love this idea and it seems to be increasingly popular.

At about 9.15 am this morning I put out a camping chair, some carpet tiles and a large plastic bowl. All gone by 10.00 am.

DH came home with a couple of books last week.

What have you given away or found?

Brilliant!

That's cool, Amazing.

Before we moved house I gave away:

A complete travel system (pushchair/pram/carseat)
A buggy board with fixings
A few ride on toys my children had grown too tall for.
Several sets of glasses
An incomplete crockery set
About 60 cookery books (some I'd inherited from my Mum, but didn't need them).
Eight terracotta plant pots of various sizes
Four folding garden chairs
A gas barbecue
A spare slow cooker
Two dvd/cd racks
Various garden tools (mostly inherited when people have had a clear out and said "You like gardening, please have these.")
Hand tools for DIY- think screwdriver sets, wrenches, spanners, hammers.
More fiction books than I'd ever like to admit to.

If stuff is clean and still in good condition, it's a great thing to do as it saves things going into landfill. I realise that some stuff might end up being resold, but the majority of people where I used to live didn't tend to run car boot sales/ ebay shops. I was just glad things were being used again!

A few people did also put envelopes through the door with thank you notes and occasionally, £5/£10 notes. Bonus!

Thanks for starting this thread, I'm feeling inspired to give it a go. I need to clear out loads of stuff and will see how it goes. I got some books from a box that is permanently in front of someone's house which was a nice find when I was out for a walk!

Absolutely loads, plants, books, plant pots, toys, garden storage box, etc.
Really common round our way... on our old street, neighbours a few doors down had both beautiful taste and regular decorative refreshes, so that worked well

I hate it. Someone put a bookshelf (empty) on the path outside their flat “free to a good home” I had to go on a ten minute detour because it blocked the path I use a wheelchair so stepping into the road wasn’t an option due to no dropped curbs by it.

I was walking the dog last week on a very popular dog walking route near my house. Someone had put out a huge box full of tug toys,tennis balls and bags of dog treats.
There was also a note that said please take some for your pets and enjoy your time together x

Ooh I love this idea, never seen it done in my area, maybe I should try it 😁

My DM has a house near hers and in the summer they put out plants for sale, anyone walking past can just pick up a plant and put the money in the letterbox… DM has bought some really nice plants from this neighbour for a fraction of the cost of what they would cost at a garden centre.I imagine her neighbour makes a nice chunk of money too as lots of plants get put out and by the end of the day most are sold.

Depends. DH and DD brought home a rusty garden pole with ball attached once. I sent them back

Everyone did this where I used to live. It was fantastic.

I tried it when I first moved in where I am now. I put out a few things, including a floor lamp.

Some twats started hitting my car with it and smashed a window. I mean, I knew we hadn’t moved to the nicest place in the world (it’s a shithole), but I wasn’t expecting that. Won’t be doing that again.

V popular here on weekends
I've put out loads of stuff including a punch bag, a side table, paint trays and brushes, gardening stuff, lamps, mini trampoline

It's an old tradition here in the US. Where I live we have alleys behind the houses, with garages off the alleys. People leave stuff out in the alley and if it isn't scooped up you put a garbage sticker on it and it gets taken on the waste collection day when the garbage trucks ply the alleys as this is where all the wheelie bins are too.

Some suburbs designate a weekend every year when residents leave out piles of unwanted stuff on the curb and thousands turn up to sift through it. People leave out kayaks, skis, clothing, lamps, old bikes, furniture, etc.

I've scored lots of stuff locally just by spotting items as I drive past the openings of alleys - a nice solid wood desk with a folding flap, cubby and drawer, a lovely gate leg kitchen table in solid wood, too many terracotta flower pots to count and some plants as well, a lovely book of Georgia O'Keefe prints, plastic chests of drawers, metal shelving, deck chairs. Also a slightly rusty cast iron frying pan which I restored to its former glory.

We also have Little Free Libraries, and Dry Goods boxes. These are on people's front lawns.

Noooo! How disappointing. Twats.

I used to live in the Netherlands. Once every couple of months there was "big rubbish" day. The council would come around and collect oversized waste for free.

Because it was well publicised people would turn up with estate cars and trailers and take away the hood rubbish. The bin lorries would turn up the next morning. The council had very little collect other than a few bits of utter shit. It was the ultimate in organised recycling.

I love doing this but know that some people don’t like their streets being visually cluttered in this way - it’s referred to as “middle class fly tipping”.

Foot spa, fish tank and a fruit bowl taken away last week. It's excellent, as long as the note is clear, folks will take anything. Good luck to them, hope they enjoy using and if they resell, good luck too.

It’s a good idea - unfortunately in london it seems to just turn into flytipping… or people leave nice furniture out when it’s raining and it gets ruined! But I’m fed up of trying to get rid of stuff on FB marketplace and no one shows up when they say they will..

It's the done thing here ( W.Mids). I absolutely love it. No note needed. Used to be just metal and stuff the rag and bone man would take but now it's anything.

Eight (!£££) Nerf guns which I shared amongst mine and the neighbours kids so they all had one each.
An airer.

This is a MASSIVE thing in SE London and we LOVE it !

I have got rid of SO much by doing this

And picked up some bricks I needed

I put on my drive when I was massively trying to down size the amount of stuff inside when prepating to move a plastic wendy house, a wardrobe, a 46" tv... I had someone knock on my door about 25 minutes later to ask if I could take the Wendy house apart for them and if so they'd have it which i was abit taken a back by but did it away🤦🏻‍♀️😂

I think it's a good idea. More things we reuse the less that ends up in landfil!

Neighbours do this, a lot. They were the only ones to do it, which meant it was no longer safe to leave things in your own garden without cementing them in or nailing them to the fence. We had a couple of items pinched from inside the garden which caused a kerfuffle when I reported it to Police and put it on the local group because I had the reg of the van and a description of the thieves who had been working in one of the gardens, complete denial by the owner of the garden who made herself look incredibly stupid with no help from anyone else.

Nothing is left outside any more unless it is unwanted, not even a plant in a pot or a hanging basket and I just put stuff out that we don't want.

Part of a roll of value roofing felt, went immediately, a broken garden chair, probably went to the scrap man also very quickly, lawn mower, a box of bits accidentally left on the wall during a tidy up, a few things didn't go, people are picky round here.

Have acquired, part tin of paint, a small garden table and 2 plastic chairs. Have seen some good things left out including 2 bags of golf clubs, plenty of office chairs.

It is a good idea but does attract thieves. We have a community skip sometimes.

In parts of Germany they had (may still have) a system where each district was assigned a day where could leave stuff out on the street and people could help themselves for free. At the end of the day the council would come round and remove anything that was left.

There is probably some ludicrously long compound word for it.

Our village is brilliant for this - I think it started in the pandemic when everyone was cleaning their houses.

Everything I've put out goes within an hour or two. I've put out boxes of electrical bits, a football table, a broken tv (with note on saying not working), an office chair. Oh all sorts.

I've picked up a few books, a zimmer frame (for a Halloween costume 🤣), a little pink push along car for a friend's DC

So much quicker than marketplace or the tip

Give away some real crap this way, doesn’t always work tho

about 6 weeks ago I put the wife and kids out the front, I’ll probably give in and let them back in if uncollected by Christmas