Why spend money on furniture when you can Buy Nothing?

The first time Kathy Shamoun snagged an expensive item for her home for nothing, she was living in Manhattan in 2015 and found a listing online for an American Leather sleeper sofa. A new version retailed in the vicinity of $4,000 to $5,000, and even a used one went for $1,000.

This one was hers for the grand total of $0. All she had to do was get a friend with a van to help.

Since then, Shamoun, 46, an acupuncturist and doula who moved to Huntington that same year, has continued to snag free furniture, including a midcentury modern-style side table using platforms such as Facebook’s “Buy Nothing groups,” as well as scouring curbs in her neighborhood the night before trash pickup for large items.

Her curbside pickups have yielded a full bed and a twin-size one for her two school-age kids, a dresser that was a “really cool Art Deco piece, totally solid wood” for her son’s room, and an original Eames fiberglass side chair, which can sell new for several hundred dollars.

“If I see something that looks good or worth taking, I think, ‘Oh no, it’s such a shame that this is going to get crushed in a garbage truck tomorrow,’ ” said Shamoun, who also alerts others online about free goods waiting to be scooped up. “It’s a shame to waste things that were in perfectly good shape and not try to find an owner.”

Getting hyperlocal

In these times of rising costs, high inflation and pandemic-driven supply chain shortages, getting something for nothing can feel sweeter than ever.

Founded in 2013 as the Buy Nothing Project by two women in Washington State — and with a recently launched app — today there are 7,000 Buy Nothing communities in 44 countries, operating primarily on Facebook and via the Buy Nothing app.

Long Islanders on Facebook have many choices, some town- or county-specific and others Islandwide, such as Long Island Free Items Suffolk & Nassau, a group with more than 10,000 members. There’s also Pay Nothing Long Island, with more than 5,000 members, which focuses on free events and activities.

Other pages such as Long Island Curb Alert, with 12,000 members, are dedicated to calling attention to items residents are putting out for garbage pickup.

Craigslist is another place to search. Recently, a Steinway baby grand piano in Port Washington was being offered for free “in great condition available for a music-loving family.”

On Freecycle.org, people can post items they would like, as well as those they want to give away. A recent search for sites pinned near Hempstead showed requests for a twin bed from Roslyn, a heater from Floral Park and artificial grass wall panels from Valley Stream. Offered for nothing: two window air-conditioning units in Floral Park, an oak dining room hutch in Westbury and a sofa, love seat and armchair in Manhasset.

Helping others

The gift economy, where goods and services are given with no expectation of payment, can inspire altruism. One woman recently posted on a Long Islandwide group that she was moving to an apartment and starting over from scratch, in need of a couch, kitchen table, coffee maker, TV stand, bike, crockpot and vacuum.

She didn’t say where she was moving to or from, but people jumped in to help, with offers of free couches and glassware and shares to other pages.

When Donna Borgesano of West Babylon posted free items on Facebook while packing to move to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, she was contacted by a woman who said she was living in a shelter and asked for the pasta dishes and gravy bowls Borgesano had posted. “We gave her silverware, all the things we thought she would need for an apartment,” Borgesano said.

After 27 years and raising two children in their house, Borgesano, a 60-year-old retired human resources manager, and her husband, Ben, a 67-year-old repairman, had many items they initially tried to sell at garage sales they held this summer, such as a large camper top for a truck, vases, a rice cooker, 30 to 40 picture frames, tools, vinyl records, a wicker bassinet, curtains still in their packaging and a rocking chair.

But there was so much left over after the garage sales, which didn’t bring in much money, Borgesano said, that she shifted strategy to get the stuff out of the house.

“As soon as I put it for free, that’s when people tended to come,” she said, noting that 50 requests came in one day to pick up items.

Avoiding the landfill

Pamela Schwartz of North Babylon, a full-time dog-walker and dog-sitter who owns a 12-year-old Yorkshire terrier-Maltese mix named Smokey, recently came across a dog clock with a different bark for each hour that she picked up after spotting it on the Suffolk County Buy Nothing group.

“I look at it daily,” Schwartz said of the group she uses, “and if there’s something cool or interesting or something I can use and I don’t have to go far, it’s right in my neighborhood, I try to get it,” she said.

Schwartz has offered things for free — a potholder, a gift card to dinner and a movie, clothes, a coffee pot. She got a SodaStream soda maker in a Buy Nothing group, but didn’t care for it so she gave it away to a mother whose child had diabetes, couldn’t have sugar and loved seltzer, “so she was really happy.”

Maria Stallings a flight attendant from Great Neck, uses the groups to get and give free items, including an air fryer that she got for her husband and a small desk she gave away. She also often contributes books to the Little Free Library near the Great Neck train station.

Stallings can’t bear the thought of throwing away usable things, so when she puts something at the curb, she puts a “free” sign next to it. Most of the time, someone snaps it up before the garbage truck arrives.

Even broken items can be salvaged by the right person, Stallings said. She has given away a refrigerator that needed a new compressor and coil. “It was a good one: double door, name-brand, expensive,” she said, adding that it doesn’t matter to her if the new owner kept it or fixed it and sold it. “I believe in trying to keep things from a landfill,” she said.

That’s how Shamoun felt when she decided to give away her hot tub. In the midst of redoing her backyard with a new deck and landscaping, she didn’t plan on using the 8-by-8-foot hot tub left by the previous owner. She estimates it would have originally cost about $1,200, but didn’t want to deal with installation and water hookup costs.

The man who took it had “a whole team of help” and came by several times with tools and trucks to remove it, Shamoun said. “It was working fine,” she said. “People love hot tubs — just not me.”

Shamoun also had to remove “gorgeous, huge bushes” from her yard to make way for a new deck. “I was desperate to find someone to take them,” she said.

A man came, dug them out and drove them away.

“My heart sang that these bushes didn’t have to die,” Shamoun said. “The guy texted me weeks later that the bushes were in their places and alive and thriving.”