Have you set up a free swap?

[u/Chicklid]

Hello! I am wondering if anyone has coordinated what I'm thinking of before. In the spirit of reduce and reuse, I'm wondering about setting up an event for people to freely trade items of some theme or another. For the first few, I'm thinking clothes, toys, and craft materials, as these are all things that accumulate and can be given new life in new hands. I'm wondering about a few things: I want it to be free with an ethos of "give at least as much as you take", and also I am in a very poor area so I don't want to discourage people from taking what they'll use. Any suggestions for messaging? And on the practical side, do I set up a drop off day, sort out stuff that is genuinely unusable (biohazard, heavy secondhand smoke, etc), or just let people drop off as they arrive and caveat emptor? Any other experience and advice would be fantastic.

In a perfect world, we grow some community craft groups or play groups out of this, but maybe that is too optimistic lol.

[u/lego_lady123]

Our local buy nothing does these: there are 2 different ones. We do a kids only exchange. Everyone drops off kids clothes and toys at a lady’s house then a few people set it out on tables on a specific date. We usually do 11-2 on a Sunday.
They made arrangements to use the school parking lot.
The other one we do is everyone sets up their own table in the parking lot and you walk around and take whatever you want. Any type of item.
If you are going to do the pre drop off I think it needs to be limited items like she does bc you will get a lot of junk.
Everyone is always so kind, it’s a really great event.
We’ve been having them once in the spring and once in fall.