Nashvillest Guide To Unloading Your Old Crap

We make no secret of our love for all things Craigslist. It may surprise you to know that we actually use it from time to time for something other than hunting down all the bad haiku and personal ads in town. We actually use Craigslist quite frequently for buying and selling furniture, concert tickets (no scalping, of course), airline credits, bikes and more. And lately we’ve learned that Craigslist isn’t actually our only option when it comes to scoring a great deal on other people’s used junk – and we want to pass on the love. Try these other sites the next time you’re buying/selling something. 

Kijiji: Have fun saying that ten times fast. Kijiji is almost exactly like Craigslist, but without as much spam (it’s only a matter of time). It’s also slightly easier to use, although we don’t really find Craigslist to be all that challenging. The categories are more intuitive, particularly in the “Jobs” section. 

Freecycle: The Nashville Freecycle has over 8800 members giving (and taking) free stuff. That’s a lot of free stuff. As you might expect by the name Freecycle, everything is free. You can find a lot of good items from people who would rather give their things away than go through the hassle of posting it for sale. It’s a Yahoo group, which is kind of annoying and inconvenient to join, but it’s worth the effort. We don’t recommend opting for email notification on every new post – the daily digest does fine. 

The JobJar: You may have seen signs for The Job Jar around town – that’s how we found out about it. True to its name, this site focuses mostly on odd-job postings, but there is a (currently empty) marketplace section as well. Perfect for freelancers and odd-jobbers, or anyone looking to pick up some extra money by working on the weekends. Don’t let the scarcity of content fool you – The Job Jar is just getting back on its’ feet after a little hiatus. Help them out by posting your job needs! They’re solely focused on Middle Tennessee, so you won’t spend hours sorting through the spam like you would on national sites. 

Facebook Marketplace: So easy and so effective. The nice thing about Facebook Marketplace is that you can target the networks you want to reach – In our case, Nashville, TN. You can also target college or employer networks (if you’re in them). Facebook Marketplace brings those window shoppers right to your ad, and has the added bonus of making sure you’re buying from a real person. You can see if you have any mutual friends, which puts our minds at ease when venturing out to meet a stranger after work.  

We left out all of the newspapers’ classified sections for brevity’s sake. Many of the local papers do offer free online classifieds, so remember those as needed. If you know of any others we’ve missed, let us know in the comments and we’ll update our running list. 

Photo by adamrice.