Americans spend more money in December than in any other month, and create 5.8 million tons of additional waste. Gift returns peak in the first week of January, with many going straight to the landfill. Free stores offer an alternative –– finding new treasures and getting rid of unwanted items while bypassing the spend-to-waste pipeline.

Free store operators across the US say the model works well; people don’t take everything they can get their hands on. Instead, they tend to walk away with a handful of items that they truly need, leaving the rest for others.

The goal, says Bonnie Nordvedt, administrator of the Baltimore Free Store, ”is for everyone to rethink their shopping habits, spending habits, and general addiction to ‘newer-bigger-better. We envision communities forged through relationships based on mutual aid and cooperation. We use the distribution of free items as a catalyst for change and to demonstrate what can be done when communities work together.”

Bonnie first volunteered with the store in 2007 when she was 21, and then ended up running the store. Originally, a few volunteers collected and stored donations at a warehouse and then set up markets in different neighborhoods twice a month. About 25 active volunteers help Nordvedt run the store, which is financed mainly through grants.

“We get some interesting artwork. We’ve gotten pieces of jewelry and pottery that are worth a lot of money.” They either sell the valuable items to help support the store, or raffle them off to shoppers. Everything else, from shirts and jackets to toys and furniture, is free to anyone, regardless of income.

“We have seen a lot of people who think the free items are just for those who can’t otherwise afford them,” she says. “While that is definitely a part of why we do this, it is not the main reason. We want to bring people together, not continue to segregate them into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’ Every single person should be reusing, repurposing, giving, and taking.”

Ben Aubin started the Portland Free Store in 2009 as a way to bring the items in the boxes where people can bring and take items, into a central location to protect them from the wet Pacific Northwest climate. The store, which Ioperates out of a painted school bus, offers a bike delivery service. A customer fills out a wishlist online or at various places in the community. As soon as a match is made, the item will be delivered to the door via bike.

Aubin says his goal is to “turn garbage into money,” creating an entrepreneurial model that helps people make a living doing something they believe in. To sustain the store, he has created a membership program. Individuals pay $20 a year and are then entitled to discounts at several local businesses, which helps the local economy. The store makes enough of a profit to employ four part-time bike deliverers. Delivery service is free.

The store recently helped a woman who had found a room to rent after a bout of homelessness but had no furniture. She came to the store looking for an air mattress, but left empty-handed. The next day, a community member donated two air mattresses, and the store notified the woman immediately.

“She was fighting to hold back the tears,” says Aubin. “[She said] it restored her faith in humanity.”

In New York, on the first Saturday of the month, volunteers with the Hell’s Kitchen Free Store set up tables in front of the Ryan Chelsea-Clinton Community Health Center. It grew out of neighborhood swap parties run by social worker and community organizer Chana Widawski. 

In March 2021, she recruited volunteers to put up shelves in the side entrance of a closed business in Manhattan, turning it into a 24/7 public storefront where people could leave and take items based on their needs, with no cash changing hands. “It became a community center, a gallery, a place to get things,” she says. “It’s about the intersection of waste diversion, mutual aid and community building.”

:”here was a book donated the other day called Poverty in Affluence, and that’s what we have in Hell’s Kitchen,” she told Lilith magazine in 2021. “People who are fresh out of being incarcerated, people who are staying in nearby shelters, and some who don’t have a bed in a shelter; they’re grateful for the toiletries that we have out there and other resources too. And then there are the people who are giving away Gucci boots and fancy nail polishes and beard-trimming kits. It’s a real mix.”

 “What I love most is that we don’t have a bank account. We don’t have a till, any money to sustain us at all. It is all done through donation,” says Martha Gelnaw, who has volunteered with the project from the start. “Everybody feels good on both the giving and the taking side.”

The free stores come in all shapes and sizes, from brick-and-mortar shops to permanent public spaces and regular pop-up events. “It doesn’t have to be a giant 24/7 thing instantly,” says Widawski. “Mine started as a community event that I did once, and then it was successful, so I did it again.” 

After the Hell’s Kitchen Free Store lost its permanent location in 2023, the volunteer team started organizing monthly pop-up events in partnership with the Ryan Center. “It’s not that hard. Put your tables out, take stuff in, give it away,” says Gelnaw. “It’s so doable.”

In addition to partnering with local organizations, the key to a successful free store is the cohort that makes it happen, says Gelnaw. Their group coordinates via WhatsApp and monthly meetings, with people pitching in in various ways –– some volunteer at events while others print flyers, prepare banners, or source new tables as needed.

A similar idea to a free store is a Really Really Free Market, which offer free services as well as goods. The first were in Miami, Florida, and Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2004 as part of anti-globalization protests against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. In the years since, Really Really Free Markets have sprung up in dozens of cities across the US.

Cover image: Hell’s Kitchen Free Store