Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (Real Simple Magazine (May 2009)

I read some interesting ideas in Real Simple magazine about recycling.  It seemed like an innovative and fun idea, if you have the time.  It's a "party" concept where you have a get-together at someone's home and trade your stuff.  You ask for clean, gently used goods and hand out color-coded stickers to guests to use when they want to claim an item.  The strategies include drawing straws or some other clever idea to pick who gets to shop first.  You limit the number of items to three per turn to keep it fair.  For every item a guest donates, you provide a poker chip or token of some kind to that person so they can use them to "purchase" the items they want.  I suppose everyone would go home with the same number of items they started with, however, there would have to be some system for exchanging the more pricey items that everyone may want with the items that are less popular.  You'd either have to draw for them, or place them at a higher premium than the other items.  Some of the items the magazine suggested besides clothing and accessories, included:  children's items (grouped by age), books/cds/dvds, housewares, outdoor things, or you could designate what they can bring.  Something like "cleaning out the garage" items.  Sounded like fun...no hassle with a garage sale and you get to bring home things you might more likely use.