Sure, you could just throw it away, but isn’t there a saying about this? Your trash, someone else’s treasure? Here are some options.

Craigslist is a great place to sell or give away pretty much anything, and you might be surprised at how much people are willing to pay. I have sold a car, furniture, computer parts, and various other items. I prefer Craigslist over Ebay because buyers are usually local, so you don’t have to deal with shipping.

If you have stuff to get rid of that you don’t necessarily want to sell, try Freecycle. Most major cities and a lot of smaller cities in the US have a Freecycle group, which is a Yahoo! group where you can post an item you want to get rid of for others to pick up. I’ve used this service several times and have gotten rid of everything I’ve posted.

Two sites I discovered recently but haven’t looked at in depth are Wigix and Ztail. Wigix (an acronym for Want It Got It eXchange) is essentially an online classifieds system with a pricing structure similar to but cheapter than eBay’s. Ztail lets users post and sell items and have other users determine their value or worth. There’s also Costco’s Trade-In program. I haven’t tried it yet, but it might be worth a shot.

Of course you could use most of these sites to acquire more stuff, but that would be defeating the point, wouldn’t it?