Having a clear out?

Dominic Laurie
Working Lunch

The Shelton family have furnished most of their home via Freecycle.

If you've ever tried to furnish a house on a budget, you'll know how hard it can be.

In the shops the price tag will invariably come to thousands of pounds.

But Nicola and Oliver Shelton do things differently at their North London home.

In their back garden, Nicola's two daughters Daisy and Scarlett play on a set of swings. It's one of the few large items in their home they've actually paid for.

Most of their household goods have come from fellow users of the Freecycle website - and those they no longer want are redistributed among the community in the same way.

From large items like the TV, fire guard, connecting doors, shelves and tables, to smaller more everyday objects like cement, weedkiller, an electric toothbrush, clothes hangers and even Nicola's daughter's cardigan, all were obtained for free.

How Freecycle works

Nicola logs onto her local Freecycle website - one of almost 500 such sites across the UK. She uses the site to post messages about items she needs and items she wants to give away.

"There are things I've got that I wouldn't have bought otherwise," she says. "My daughters have a wooden wendy house in the garden and there's no way I could have afforded that.

My daughters have a wooden wendy house in the garden and there's no way I could have afforded that. Nicola Shelton

"And then there's things I've got like a front gate that I would have had to have bought, which then gives me money to spend on something else which might be the gas bill."

There are lots of free exchange websites in the UK, but 1.7million registered users Freecycle is one of the biggest.

Charity shops

Of course these sites aren't the only way of giving your goods away for free. Charity shops are a big draw too. And the benefit of those is that someone will end up making money for good causes from your altruism.

But charity shops do have limited space, and have to pay the rent. So they only stock certain items they know will sell. With sites like Freecycle, that restriction doesn't apply. Almost anything can find a home.

Once, Nicola even managed to give away a phone card from the US state of Massachussets that she picked up on holiday. A phone card collector lived round the corner and snapped it up within hours.

Making money

If you want to make money out of your unwanted goods, you can use a retail site like Amazon or Ebay instead. Amazon does brisk business selling your second hand books, and on Ebay you can sell almost anything, as long as it's legal.

If you go down this route you will almost certainly be responsible for posting or delivering your item to its new owner.

There is one other major alternative - Gumtree. Operational in certain towns and cities across the UK, it works like a giant noticeboard. The deal is people come and collect items from you - and pay you for them.

It may lack the altruistic glow of a free exchange but in these tough times a few pounds can make all the difference.