Give & Take parties

oojeyboojey

I thought y'all might like to know about the concept of "give&take" parties - my friends and I have been doing this for the last few months. Basically, you arrange a venue and bring along anything you don't need/want/love anymore. [Edit: except boyfriends/husbands]

Once there, all the guests pile their contributions onto a floor/table before rummaging through and deciding what they'd like to take home with them. Anything unclaimed at the end of the evening either gets taken back by whoever brought it, or given to charity shops.

In the last few weeks, I have managed to give away lots of clothes I hadn't worn for years, in exchange of lots of new clothes I love and wear all the time. I also got books, bags, earrings, bath salts - all kinds of stuff. This is a great format for a fun party; if everyone brings something to eat/drink then the party can last for hours, with people trying on clothes and having a giggle.

Official MoneySavingExpert.com Insert:

A great idea for a party; just set a date, gather together all your mates and all the clothes etc you've not worn or used for years, and off you go.. Many thanks to MoneySaver oojeyboojey for the top idea!

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Olliebeak

Brilliant idea - also useful for afternoons for a group of friends to sort out kiddies clothes and toys - without the little darlings around to grab them back again!

arkonite_babe

Fantastic idea. Must see if I can get any of my friends and family interested to do something like this.

Budweiser_072000

sounds like a good idea

savvy

Ah great idea and reminds me of the Swap Shop parties my mum used to organise when we were kids.

You came with your swaps, they were then graded by how many swop tokens they were worth, and got the corrresponding tokens to swap for other things to that value of token

Bongedone

They quite often hold events like this in Southwark on a community scale. They are very successful.

The organisation that hold them is called Crisp. I imagine if you email them they will tell you when and where the next one will be held: -

http://www.crispej.org.uk/

BungleGirl

I organise 'Give or Take Days' as part of my job - again they are done on a community wide scale.

If anyone fancies organising one in their community all the information on how to run them is available for free from www.wen.org.uk - they received funding to produce the 'how to' downloads. If you go to http://www.wen.org.uk/waste/resources.htm and scroll down to the link for 'Giveor Take Days'.



They were originally started by the Forest Recycling Project who have the same information available in a word document so you can easily copy and past the posters, leaflets and press releases. Go to www.giveortake.org

You do need a little bit of funding to run them on a big scale in your community but you can usually obtain this easily from your local councillors.

They are really great days - I have organised 2 so far, the first one we had 2500kg of stuff in and only 41kg went to landill! I haven't done the number crunching yet for the second one as it was only on 14th June.

I love the idea of doing them as parties - we could have Give or Take Days/Parties happeing all over the place!

Roman14

If, like me (sad person that I am), you have no friends nearby, or are busy working at different hours, then try:-

Yahoo Groups, and search for "Freecycle", you'll have to register, but that's free. Anything you've got that you don't want (spouses / fiancees / pets excepted), then you advertise. Similarly, if you're after something specific (but don't expect "Wanted: Gold ring" to be answered:rotfl: ) then you can also request that. Just remember it's acceptable to offer more than you ask for, although replying to "offers..." is o.k. - if you're quick and polite, then you may on the top of the list, if you're rude " want it, when can I get it?" type answers are often ignored.

"What goes around comes around" Karma.

Roman14

natxxx1

I had a swap it party, in Aid of Oxfam not that long ago, where all the stuff no-one wants goes to Oxfam! Anyway just thought I would share this from experience, if there's not loads of people, instead of putting it all onto a table you can do a show and tell of your items which adds lots of entertainment and laughs into the night, and if the item doesn't have a facinating background make one up, its a good laugh!

daleigha

great idea!!

i also remember reading in a mag about groups of friends (maybe three people or so) who had the same tastes in clothes and were the same size, clubbing together to buy clothes - usually expensive pieces, or designer handbags or whatever, and take it in turns to use them - you would have to totally trust your friends 100%, but i thought it was a good wee idea!!

oojeyboojey

Hey cool - I just noticed this was added to a weekly email :j I really feel like part of the MSE community now! Thanks:T