Freebies

LIBRARIES

• Cubesmart article about the best library systems in the US
• Braille and audio reading materials at libraries in the US
• Please, please appreciate your local library. The more patrons they get, the more funding they can ask for and believe me you want this. Why? Well that way they can get a lot more resources, such as MakerSpaces, job hunting help, a bigger selection of books, DVDs, CDs, video games, classes, and whatever else libraries are doing to push the envelope these days. Check out your local library's website and see what they're up to. I bet you will be surprised.

MISCELLANEOUS

• Reducing waste can only be a good thing.
• Having had some experience dealing with well, life, I know that dumpster diving for food sometimes is not necessary if you happen to be broke, know someone in food service, and meet them when the food establishment is closing. Trust me, they'd rather feed you than have that extra food go into the dumpster, but they have to clear it with their manager first. Just don't abuse the privilege or no one will be able to do this ever again, which is why there are so many steps to doing this in the first place. If it's already too late for that or you fear the consequences of this kind of thing, then head to the food pantry or homeless shelter and ask for some assistance. That's what they're there for.
• Rainwater is technically free. Water rights laws make this illegal to collect in many places (wtf) so know the laws in your area. In mine it's alright. I collect a bunch of it to water my plants since they prefer it to tap water. If you decide to drink this, you have to filter it through something (maybe pantyhose or a fine-mesh strainer) to get rid of grit, then bring it to a full rolling boil for one minute (preferably five, in a covered pot) first, and there's no guarantee it will be safe. Might want to run it through a countertop filter, such as a pitcher filter or other countertop type, after boiling it and letting it cool first.
• Dumpster diving in general is highly underrated, but not so much in this time of plague. I'm not sure what best practices are, just be careful. Sometimes you can find excellent stuff at a landfill, but that too is dangerous.
• DIYing whatever you'd like to DIY? Is good.
• 10/26/22 Garden idea: amass the paper grocery bags, newspapers, and/or cardboard boxes from your entire friend group or area. Doublecheck online to see if any of these have inks or chemicals that could taint your garden. Buy or otherwise get a whole awful lot of dirt, twig trimmings, wood chips, and/or whatever else will weigh down the bags/boxes/newspaper such as bricks or chunks of concrete or cinderblock or really whatever. Weed killing mulch. Wa la. Pile on enough dirt and you can plant right in it, or wait a year and add whatever fertilizers you can as it decomposes (such as burying fish scraps/guts that have gone off right underneath), then plant.
• A little something about disgusting rotten foods: they are potentially priceless compost. I'll experiment with the nastier stuff like rotten eggs, rotten milk, rotten meat, offal, and so on and so forth. It's basically blood meal or bone meal but way less appetizing. My guess is that it probably works wonders for an organic garden if you bury it deep enough, like two foot down in a garden. Which is fantastic if you can't afford expensive fertilizers and the local grocery would otherwise dump all their animal foods that are going off. But... dunno if it actually works. I do however know that rotten fish absolutely works. See if you can get some of that.
• More about the disgustingness that is great organic gardening: never, and I mean never, pass up a chance to get even a small amount of good safe manure. More is better. From healthy animals, rabbit pellets, goat manure, steer manure, chicken manure, horse manure, and so on (healthy herbivorous farm animals or ones known for safe manure; some manures are not safe for food crops; i.e. manure from fox, cat, dog) are the best fertilizers on this green earth. Their straw, scratch, and bedding is an added bonus. Get as much as you can. Spread it over all garden beds. Incorporate it into all compost piles. Spread it beneath all trees, and even on lawns. If it hasn't fully composted yet, either let it sit there for a few years til it stops giving off heat or bury it a few feet down beneath a new garden bed.
• To transport large quantities of manure, dirt, or whatever else you'll probably want to use plastic storage bins with tight fitting lids and many of them over a tarp laid on whatever conveyance you've got, possibly also bungee cords holding the whole thing together, in order to prevent the usual mess. Failing that use garbage bags. Loose transportation of this kind of literal crap is a very, very bad idea.
• Foraging for invasive species. These cover many needs: food, herbal medicine, basket weaving, perfumery, dyes, and much more. However, unless you're already out there anyway basically every day or so, I wouldn't recommend hanging out in wilderness even with maximum amount of DEET. Lyme disease-bearing ticks have increased in recent years, trust me, you do not want what I have.
• Whatever you'd otherwise throw out is fair game if you know of some use you can put it to. If you're not sure yet, you might want to withhold some of it from the recycling bin if you think you'll be able to make use of it later. Be sure to keep this "withholding" area organized, and be honest with yourself. You might not be able to do anything with it at all, and that's okay, into the recycling it goes. Note that if you figure out how to upcycle anything at all, you can then get pretty much all the free materials you want if you just ask around. Some skills that can be used to upcycle materials include sewing, weaving, basketry, crochet, macrame, leatherworking, candlemaking, and knitting. These basic techniques can be adapted from using natural materials to synthetic ones.
• Gardening? You can often find free or low-cost composting materials from a wide variety of places which would otherwise chuck perfectly good compostables in the trash or landfill. Natural food stores often have rotting organic food they'd be happy for you to take. Trendy restaurants selling organic food might have the same. Farmers sometimes have a lot of manure, more than they can deal with themselves; paying for this actually is worth it since this is far better than bagged manure. Coffee shops have coffee grounds. Carpenters have nontreated sawdust. Friends and family and neighbors might have nontreated grass clippings, bagged leaves, and/or trimmings from healthy plants. Fishmongers or grocery stores might give you rotting fish and fish guts which you can then bury more than a foot down as very old school fertilizer. City tree trimming services often will give you wood chips from where they had to chop down limbs that were getting too close to power lines, which is super important as the all-holy mulch helps your plants not die in drought. In fact you might even be able to find fill dirt from a noncontaminated place that people just want you to take, and if you're dealing with city dirt that's all compacted and shitty, this is fantastic.
• You can find free gardening materials from a wide variety of sources. "Volunteer trees" like to take root where you don't want 'em in a garden; you can pot these up and nurture them til they're grown, or transfer them to a good spot. Sometimes wild berries sprout up next to where an air conditioner drips; these can be dug up and replanted somewhere they also get good consistent watering and partial shade. Grocery store foods that haven't been cooked often can be regrown, such as garlic, ginger, green onions, mint, rosemary, mango, and avocado; there are guides for doing this online. Propagating cuttings in water and in dirt is an age-old technique for "free" garden stuff; give this a try and you'll be hooked. Foraged fruits and nuts might work for starting new plants, such as mulberry trees, acorns, and crabapples; high tek start these in plant pots and low tek shove them in the dirt where you want them to grow and see what happens (in either case please don't forget to water). I've been gardening for a while and am still learning, and the more you learn, the cheaper and easier it gets.
• You might be able to get free pallets from grocery stores. Know how to identify them so you don't wind up with the wrong kind or the super-poisonous-chemicals treated kind.
• You might be able to get reused five-gallon buckets free from restaurants, especially chain restaurants. Ask the manager.
• A very old method of "freebies"? Bartering! For instance if you garden and your neighbor gardens, trade what you grow for something they grow, yay. You can actually have gatherings and parties for this specific thing if you so choose. Other options include clothes swap parties, recipe swap party potlucks, and swap meets.
• If you are a veteran or a health care worker this country has a habit of providing a large variety of freebies every single year that changes from year to year. Just have the proof on you and there you go. I'll see what I can do about finding freebies for you guys from year to year. Load up on these, y'all, you've earned it.
• Freebies etc. for health care workers
• National Parks This, plus your local playgrounds and parks, state parks, state wilderness recreation areas, and city parks, are all actually freebies. That's right, if you were in some other country you might wind up not having these available due to private landowners hogging all of it
• Check out the Charities section to see if it has anything that matches what you're in need of right now
• If you need help with some kind of socially-involved thing such as finding a job or a community or some kind of recreation, after the pandemic you can't go wrong with the YMCA No, it's not just a catchy song, and yes, it really is all that
• Craigslist Go to the "free" section. If you've never seen it before you won't believe your eyes.
• Freecycle In theory, this can help you find freebies and put stuff you would've trashed anyway back into use. Trash to treasure and all that. Have never used it myself.

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