San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Site for giveaways now a way to connect
Facebook group meant for passing on unwanted stuff allows folks to also ‘open their hearts’
Several years ago, Debbie Alcoser created a private Facebook group for residents of Alamo Heights and nearby suburbs, a platform where they could post photos of household items they no longer wanted and were ready to pass on for free.
Alcoser, 55, couldn’t have known that the coronavirus pandemic would cause her modest brainchild — Just Give It Away! 09 — to grow from just a way for folks to jettison their unwanted belongings into a forum to help them connect at a time when human bonds feel sorely missing.
The once-sleepy group now has more than 1,000 members, many of whom have joined since the virus took hold. At one point, Alcoser said, she was signing up about 40 new members a day.
“It’s just spread like a fire,” said Alcoser, a former orthodontic assistant who now renovates and resells houses with her husband and high school sweetheart, retired police officer Louis Alcoser. “People are sharing their stuff from their porches, and opening their hearts as well.”
Alcoser said she believes that altruism, even such smallscale acts of giving, works as a kind of balm these days.
“I think it makes people feel good, especially right now, with all this craziness with the virus going on,” she said.
The rapid growth of the Facebook group — open to those who live in Alamo Heights, Olmos Park, Terrell Hills and Terrell Heights — no doubt stems in part from the flurry of decluttering and home organizing spurred by the pandemic, as people seek escape from stay-at-home boredom or try to impose order in a time of uncertainty.
The surge may also owe to the temporary shuttering of traditional donation locations, such as Goodwill and Salvation Army stores, during the height of the countywide emergency restrictions, Alcoser said.
Scrolling through Just Give It Away! 09 feels like a Norman Rockwell-esque tour of life in 21st-century America, a quasimuseum of everyday existence.
The page serves as a time capsule of sorts, a compendium of what it’s like to live and love and parent at this particular time in history, a story told through odds and ends, new and gently used.
Most items are commonplace and ubiquitous: Books, toys, puzzles, clothes, shoes, plants, food and snacks, tchotchkes, kitchenware, bikes, sporting equipment, furniture, household goods.
Some of the best reading comes from less-common items, especially those with owner-posted comments:
Popcorn popper (“Works great, well-seasoned”); a baby’s night light and noise machine (“Can’t use, doesn’t have feature to stay on all night”); bedsheets (“They don’t stay on because of our mattress topper”); window shutters (“Got for a project that didn’t work out, great condition”); dog tooth-brushing kit (“I was overzealous when I bought this”); Nostalgia Snow Cone Machine (“Missing the cones! Maybe used twice!”); Whole Foods’ organic hot dogs (“Apparently we are not organic hot dog people. I’m not even sure they are supposed to look like this.”)
Some of the items posted are a bit head-scratching, Alcoser said. One member gave away two remaining Sharpie pens from a box of five. Another gave away three cans of La Croix sparkling water. Yet another offered a bunch of fresh parsley.
“You wouldn’t think people would go for those things, but they do,” Alcoser said.
She said she limited membership in the group to those who live in the designated neighborhoods, all of which are within the Alamo Heights School District. To make the group any larger would have been a logistical nightmare, she said.
She said she’s aware that the targeted neighborhoods in the Facebook group are known for their affluence. (The 09 in the group’s title refers to 78209 — one of San Antonio’s most vaunted ZIP codes.)
“But there are plenty of residents who have needs,” she said. Most participants are female, but there is the occasional male, Alcoser said, one of whom recently relinquished his beer-making kit.
How it works: It’s strictly first come, first served. After an item is posted, someone who wants it will comment “SOLD.” The accepted etiquette is for the taker to immediately private message the giver to get the address and arrange a time to retrieve the item from the porch or garage. It’s considered bad form to not pick up the item within a day or so.
Other rules: No irate customers. It says so, right there on the page. No advertising your business on the site. You must live in one of the designated neighborhoods. Please sanitize or wipe down items. No curbside pickup — don’t be leaving your free stuff by the street.
Those giving away food — maybe they bought too much at Costco, or their kid doesn’t like a snack — cannot post products that are expired.
In the beginning, Alcoser banned “ISOs” — the “In Search Of” function. The site is for giving away and browsing, not actively searching or trolling for money. But she’s relaxed that rule somewhat with the pandemic. Recently, a few members banded together to collect baby clothes and other items for a young mother one of them knew who direly needed such goods.
Most of the time, the giver and receiver don’t even meet in person. But sometimes they do.
“I’ve seen people meet up on the site and say, ‘I didn’t know you were my neighbor!’ ” said Alcoser, who, like her husband, graduated from Alamo Heights High School in 1983 and has three kids ages 33, 27 and 14.
It was a desire for a less anonymous way to give that sowed the idea.
“You can give to places like Goodwill, and you know that you help others, but you never see the response,” she said. “It felt sort of stagnant. I thought: Why not start a neighborhood site where everyone could be included. I love neighbors, I love to talk to neighbors, I love people getting to know each other more.”
In the beginning, some were skeptical. What if someone comes and takes my potted plants? I’m not giving those away.
But in four years, there’s been nothing in the way of thievery or malfeasance.
“It’s almost like there’s online neighborhood accountability,” said Inga Cotton, who recently gave away her old vegetable steamer when she decided to buy a larger one.
“If anybody starts acting out, we sort of know where you live,” she said, laughing and joking. Well, sort of joking.
“What I like about the group is everyone is close and local and it’s not complicated,” she said. “It’s got a good vibe, and it’s not about making money. I know lots of people use Craigslist or Facebook’s Marketplace. But what I like about this group is everyone plays fair and no one gets in an argument.”
Cotton, mother of a 10-yearold and a 12-year-old, said the group is a great way to recycle, say, the shoes her kids outgrow at a stratospheric rate or the puzzles that have begun to bore them.
“I just don’t like sending stuff to the landfill,” she said.
She recently posted SOLD on an offering of used kites — something safe and fun she and her family can do outdoors.
Giving and taking on the site instills a sense of balance, she said.
“We all have the sense there’s suffering out there, people who are ill, who’ve lost jobs,” she said. “Being able to give things I don’t need any more — it costs me nothing and makes me feel like I’m trying to put some good out in the universe. ”
Recently, Alcoser sponsored a weekend contest on the site. Members could vote on who gave away the coolest stuff during that time period. The winner was a hippo cookie jar, but the owner passed the honor to the runner-up: Alamo Heights resident Alisha Coyle, who gave away a Kenmore washer and dryer.
Who gives away a Kenmore washer and dryer?
“Someone whose new husband has a better washer and dryer,” quipped Coyle, a newlywed and pediatric speech therapist who has belonged to the group for a few years.
For her generosity, Alcoser gave Coyle a $50 H-E-B gift card.
One of the neatest things about the site: With the pandemic grinding on, Alcoser has learned that some members have taken to sharing things they’ve received with each other.
“This just really ups my faith in humanity” she said. “I’m so glad I started this.”