I don’t usually like to put negativity out into the world, but there’s some shit I need to unload on the rest of you.

Do you have a local Buy Nothing group on Facebook? We do. I have used it frequently to rid my house of items that have outlived their useful life with us. It’s really nice to know that our old stuff can be used by another family.

But wow Buy Nothing has so many annoying rules that make me not want to use it anymore.

Here is one that really pisses me off. If someone asks the Buy Nothing group for a certain item, we are not allowed to comment telling them where they could purchase that item.

Okay, fine, I guess I get it. This is a group for reducing consumption, not encouraging it.

We are not allowed to do curb alerts. You know when you’re cleaning out the basement playroom and you’ve got like fifteen medium-sized toys you want to get rid of? You cannot just put them outside and post in the Buy Nothing group that you’ve got these items available and people can just come and get them. Why? Because this does not build community. No, instead you must upload a photo for each item, and then coordinate pickup with fifteen different people to get those toys gone.

Oh! And don’t go thinking you can just post those photos and immediately assign them to the first commenter. No! We are supposed to let things “simmer” for at least 24 hours. As the justification goes: not everyone is on Facebook constantly and everyone should get a chance to “win” these items. Best practice is to let it wait for twenty-four hours before choosing a recipient.

Once you get through all those hurdles, you have to coordinate pickup and that is the worst. People who were extremely motivated to inherit a used litter box (why?!) on Sunday morning can barely be bothered to respond to messages by Sunday night, and will no show multiple days in a row.

All this is to say, I had one of my most successful Buy Nothing purges earlier this week. I put four items up on Monday afternoon, and about 28 hours later every single item had been picked up with the absolute minimum of communication. It was awesome. I want to give gold stars to all those recipients.

How did I have such great success, you ask? Well… I broke one of the rules. I did not let stuff simmer for twenty-four hours and that seems to have really made a difference. I picked recipients pretty quickly, kept the momentum going, and wow that works so much better.

But I would also like to be clear: most of the stuff I’m getting rid of is going to Goodwill. It’s the stuff that Goodwill won’t take (a ripped tent, wall-climbing handholds) that I’m going to be putting on Buy Nothing for the next six months.

I realize this is a very niche post and most of you (the three people I know who read this regularly) will not make it to the end of this post. But I kind of hope that there will be other people out there who google “why is Buy Nothing so annoying and the worst” and end up here at my blog post somehow and feel seen.