Blog On Craigslist, “everything’s free!” means “everything’s free”

What would you think if you read “EVERYTHING'S FREE!! Furniture! Clothes! Books! Toys! We’re giving it away, so come take it away!” in a Craigslist ad? Probably that everything was, you know, free, right? Maybe you’d pause when you got there and found the front door unlocked and no one home, but you know who didn’t do that? The people who responded to that actual “Everything’s free!” Craigslist ad in Boulder, and as a result, people basically took everything in her home that wasn’t nailed down.

She was surprised. I am not.

Sure, the ad didn’t say “Walk right in!” but the front door was open. And it’s Boulder, where departing students have been known to leave anything and everything behind as they depart school, from beat-up couches and mismatched dishes to fully functional televisions and sweet skull bongs. The cops, for what it’s worth, agree—they are not treating the case as a crime. That’s a lucky break for the woman who posted the ad, since the only crime here is criminal stupidity. (Okay, being generous, I could settle for criminal ignorance). See, anyone who’s ever posted anything for free on Craigslist knows what a riotous response that will bring. 

Seriously, the next time you need to throw a lot of crap away, make a list of it, put it on Craigslist in the free section, and reap the whirlwind. Your inbox will fill up faster than if you shut off your spam filter and signed up for every free porn site you could find, all in the same day. People will come from near and far to claim stuff you’d normally have to pay real, American dollars to have someone haul away. 

Moving boxes? Gone! Broken refrigerator? Out of here! Hundreds of used typewriter ribbons? Okay, I’ve never done that one, but I suspect strongly that they’d be gone within an hour. Actually, I suspect if you posted an ad that said “free bags of trash and free punch in the face” on the site, you’d have at least a half-dozen people trying to convince you they were the ones that deserved your garbage and random violence, and could you hold it until they can make it over Friday after work?

So yeah. Learn from this poor woman’s mistake—if you write “everything’s free” and leave your address, Craigslisters will strip your house to the foundation faster than a Biblical plague of locusts. Hell, even your presence in the house might not be enough to stop them, but especially if you leave the front door open and the house unattended, you should expect to come home to at least an empty house, if not a vacant lot. Craigslist takes the word “free” seriously, and so should you before you post.