“Free For All’ looking to expand into Kāpiti

Two years ago, Free For All began with a passion for saving useable items from landfill. Founder Dee Glentworth was volunteering in an Op Shop in Wellington when she decided to try and rehome the excess - items the Op Shop couldn’t sell and that would otherwise have been disposed of – via free garage sales.

“We started off by having free garage sales but Wellington weather had other ideas so we decided to have shed shops”, says Dee. “There was a Free For All shed shop in Paraparaumu which unfortunately had to close due to the volunteer’s tenancy ending. We had a free op shop in Wellington as well but it was too popular for the location and also had to close. After quite a bit of thinking and a lot of research we decided to go online to make Free For All’s services available at all times, at all places and more importantly in all weather and so www.freeforall.co.nz was born.”

Following the motto “Don’t bin it, Share it!”, the new website offers a free service where people can list and reserve items free of charge, a little like a resource library. 

Dee explains “All it takes is for the community to list unwanted or unused items on www.freeforall.co.nz and for other members to reserve and collect them. You no longer have to wait to amass enough items to warrant a trip to the local charity store or if you have a large amount of items you don’t need to drive round with them in your boot for six weeks like I often did.“

There is a multitude of categories to make listing easy, including a lucky dip category. “The lucky dip category is perfect to rehome items after a ‘spring clean’, when you’ve ended up with boxes of mixed items.  You simply take a couple of pics, upload them, add a basic description and wait for them to be reserved and collected from your doorstep. Simple!!!!”

The website now also includes a chat forum, with a wanted section to help match items with people – like a dating service for things. Dee says “We work really hard to provide good support for all our users and want to make the website focussed on community needs, so we always welcome feedback and suggestions. We invite the Kāpiti community to become part of the Free For All family and start sharing your unwanted items!”