EASTHAMPTON — Throughout the city on any given day, people can be seen pulling up to an address they’ve never been to and scooping up items left on a front porch or stoop or even tied to a hand railing, for free.
From Instant Pot electric pressure cookers and brand-new Yankee candles to refurbished dressers, ATVs and sewing lessons, Buy Nothing Easthampton/Southampton, MA offers residents of the two communities opportunities to gift and receive items and services through a Facebook group. And while the cash-free local platform enables its participants to receive virtually anything they might need or want in their everyday routines, one of the group’s administrators, PJ Niver, says it’s much more than free stuff.
“It’s more about community building. It’s about kindness and sharing,” said Niver, of Easthampton. “I think it helps to make us aware that we live in a community of neighbors who are people we have things and values in common with.”
Niver, who was born in Pittsfield and raised in southern Connecticut, moved to Easthampton in 2012. Although she’s only resided in the city for about a decade, Niver says she knows more people around her than some other communities she’s lived in for much longer, a fact she credits to Buy Nothing.
One of the first items she decided to give was a piece of Franciscan glass candy dish that had been in her family for a long time, sitting predominantly on the mantelpiece. She continued to hang onto the candy dish for years until she began downsizing and decided she didn’t want to be responsible for the item any more. When she posted the item in the Northampton Buy Nothing group, which has since splintered into several groups geared toward more hyperlocal gift-giving, one of the commenters requested the candy dish because she had a matching set of glasses that would fit in nicely.
“It was part of her set, so I met up with her and gifted it to her. It felt good,” she recalled. “We often hang onto things because they’re ‘still good,’ but giving like this feels better and like you’re not just abandoning things.”
Members of the Buy Nothing group share from their abundance through a post and wait for fellow participants to comment and request the item. Oftentimes, interested participants will tell a story or share an anecdote as to why they’re chosen and type in responses as if they’re speaking face to face with the person looking to gift the item.
From Oct. 13 to Dec. 12, the approximately 1,470 active members posted more than 3,900, according to Niver.
After a period of time, the person looking to gift the item will select someone and arrange a time to deliver or pick up the item. Participants can also request items they might be in need of or are looking to borrow, such as a dog kennel or small household appliances.
The Easthampton/Southampton group was established seven years ago. However, the concept of the Buy Nothing group did not originate in the Valley.
The project originally began as a social experiment started by two friends, Rebecca Rockefeller and Liesl Clark, in Bainbridge Island, Washington, in July 2013. The pair were on a beach in the Pacific Northwest with their kids when they noticed how much of the shore was covered in plastics, much of which had come from people’s homes, workplaces and cars. Rockefeller and Clark started Buy Nothing as a way to stave off plastics in every ecosystem by encouraging people to buy less and share more.
Since then, the hyper-local gift economy concept now has groups in 44 nations and roughly 6.5 million members, according to the Buy Nothing Project website.
In Massachusetts, there are more than 200 Buy Nothing groups and include chapters that are geared for Hampshire County residents in Northampton/Hatfield/Whately, Amherst, South Hadley, Holyoke, the hilltowns, and Belchertown. There are also chapters present in several Franklin County communities, including Greenfield, Charlemont, Ashfield and Bernardston.
Teresa Sophia of Easthampton stumbled upon the Buy Nothing group around 2019 when she was cleaning out her mother’s house and found herself with lots of items to give away. In the past, she participated in other freecycling initiatives — or the giving of items to others instead of throwing them away — through email, but found this method more efficient.
“I wanted to purge everything, but I didn’t want to just rent a dumpster and have it end up in a landfill,” she said. “I have always loved shopping at tag sales and thrift stores, and this kind of feels like that as descriptions and photos pop up on my feed. And the whole Buy Nothing idea of passing it along to someone who can make use of something and help out my neighbors really appealed to me.”
Though there are groups out there in the Facebook Marketplace that allow bartering, buying and trades, that isn’t allowed in Buy Nothing.
Since joining, Sophia, who now serves as a co-administrator of the Buy Nothing Easthampton/Southampton group, has received a breadmaker and an icemaker, and given and received clothing and pet toys, and has become better acquainted with several of her neighbors.
Since becoming a member earlier this year, Joy Oosten-Hocking of Southampton said she’s gotten to know her way around Easthampton better.
“It’s not just a little downtown, there’s all sorts of little neighborhoods and I’ve gotten to know Easthampton pretty well,” she said. “I was a little bit nervous at first, but now that I’ve figured out how it all works, it’s part of my community now. I’ve actually made some friends through the group with people that I would probably never have even met.”
This past spring, Oosten-Hocking had mulch delivered to her home and realized when the pile was dumped in her driveway that it was way more than she needed. When she posted it on the group’s page, several people wanted to come by and snag some mulch for their own homes.
“It’s part of my community now. I’ve actually made some friends through the group with people that I would probably never have even met,” she said.
Oosten-Hocking first joined about four years ago. Initially, she posted on her personal feed that she was looking for a dresser and a friend suggested she join the group and ask around on that platform. Since then, she’s snagged various pieces of furniture, refinished them and reposted them for others.
Another member, Rebecca Rawson, said her entire living room is furnished and decorated with items from the group members.
“I redo furniture for fun to keep myself busy and I find all sorts of stuff on there. … I’ll keep it in the house until I find something new and then I put it back in the group for others,” said Oosten-Hocking. “I hate throwing things away and wasting stuff, so it’s nice that people will want something that I’ve redone and made look new again.”
In addition to gifting and receiving items, some participants offer up meals and services to people. Liz Sawyer of Easthampton, for example, offers up fabrics to make projects like a table runner or a small quilt. The catch, as Sawyer puts it, is the recipient has to make the suggested project with the provided materials.
With the gift, she offers up use of her machines, materials and time to help instruct those who have little to no experience with the craft in her quilting studio.
“I have the time, space and skills. It’s something that I can offer and I enjoy doing it,” she said.
Sawyer, who is a newer member to the group, was putting items on her curb when she met Niver, who suggested posting the items on the group’s page.
After retiring as a family and consumer science teacher at a school in Connecticut, Sawyer said she wanted to do something that could fill her time and discovered quilting. For the last decade, she has been making quilts for The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford. The summer camp was founded by late actor Paul Newman in 1988 and continues to offer year-round programming onsite and in hospitals to children coping with cancer and other serious illnesses and conditions. Each camper is gifted a quilt handmade by quilters throughout the East Coast.
“I guess the teacher in me comes out. It’s a way I can reach out and give back to do something for the greater good,” she said.
Since joining the Buy Nothing group, 17 people — including a neighbor who lives four houses away — have taken Sawyer up on her offer. Through the projects, she encourages the participants to create quilts for the campers.
For Sawyer, one of the biggest benefits is seeing some of the young children who have taken up her offer bring their parents in to teach them.
“I think that Buy Nothing brings out good in people,” she said. “It’s not just giving up something you don’t want or something you don’t use to someone who can. It’s a little bit social, a little bit emotional and allows people to gain something they might be looking for whether they’re rich or poor and provides an exchange of kindness, something that is so important and often being missed out on in this world.”
Emily Thurlow can be reached at ethurlow@gazettenet.com.
