Freecycle.org – why are you so terrible?

I’ve spent probably an hour today trying to give away an awesome sofa couch and matching stuffed chair.  I tried to list it on Craiglist, but they had this terrible system where you had to give a phone number and wait for an automated phone call or SMS.  It only allows you submit or try a phone number every five minutes.  When the automated phone call doesn’t come through, you’re stuck trying another number.  Oh, and you can only try up to three numbers in a 12 hour period.  I just want to GIVE AWAY some awesome furniture!  I’m not applying for a line of credit.  After futzing around for an hour or so, Craigslist apparently gave up and let me post anyhow.

In the meantime I tried out Freecycle.org.  What a fiasco.  It took me 60 seconds to figure out how to sign up.  To post anything you have to join a group – but joining a group was even less intuitive than the way to sign up.  Once you joined a group, you were punted to a Yahoo Groups page.  But, to do anything further you had to then sign up for a Yahoo! account – not that any of this was explicit.

I eventually just went old school – and wrote FREE on some cardboard and put them on the sofa and chair in the driveway.

Preparing to paint

Here’s what I did to get ready to paint:

  • Gathered a lot of cardboard boxes, opened up and laid flat
  • Taped said cardboard into large overlapped sheets, taped up any holes
  • Bought primer, dark gray
  • Opened the garage for ventilation
  • Changed into clothes I didn’t mind getting dirty
  • Looked carefully at the various diagrams to make sure I’m going to paint certain parts the colors I want