A moral conundrum | reselling after a fix-up

Back when Freecycle was a thing, they had a policy saying that you are not supposed to resell an item you pick up from Freecycle. And Buy Nothing groups have the same rule in place, mainly to keep people from joining the groups merely to get inventory for selling.

The point of Buy Nothing is to keep stuff local and out of the landfill, and Freecycle had the same purpose.

This makes clear sense to me, and when I suspect someone in my group is just snapping things up willy-nilly for reselling, I skip on by them and I give my items to someone else.

I am wondering, though: is there any moral wiggle room when you’ve received a free item and then rehabbed it, thus adding value?

Here’s what triggered my thinking:

Someone wants to buy my quilt

You know that white-and-blue quilt with matching shams that I got from my Buy Nothing group, with the stains and the tear?

I mended the rip (very imperfectly!), using some scrap fabric.

And I addressed the stains with lots of Oxi-Clean soaks, multiple trips through the washing machine, and some sun-bleaching.

The set looks pretty darn good now, and it serves nicely for the summer season, when my down duvet is way too heavy.

Anyway, someone saw my quilt online and sent me a message asking if I would sell it. At first, I was weighing whether or not I wanted to part with it, but then I remembered I got it from my Buy Nothing group, which means selling it is probably against the rules.

Ok, but what if you invested time/money?

If you pick something up and then immediately resell it, that’s clearly an issue.

But I am wondering if that changes once you’ve invested labor or materials into fixing an item up. No one would have wanted to buy the quilt and shams in the as-is condition I received them. They are only sale-able because I invested in them (mainly time!

I also thought about that dirty, spattered bookcase I got, with the shelf partially melted away.

I bought legs for it, turned it upside down to hide the messed-up shelf, cleaned it, and sanded, primed, and painted it. It is nothing like what I originally picked up.

In this case, it would be fine to resell it, because it was just a Facebook Marketplace freebie, but it is a good example of how you can add a lot of value to something that was junk to the original owner.

Or, remember that old tallboy Freecycle dresser that was one of my first painting projects? I always wondered if it would be ok to sell it after all the labor I put into it (and I also bought new hardware for it).

That’s a theoretical exercise, though, because I left it behind at my old house, and I have no idea what has happened to it since.

(And honestly, I do not care, because I don’t want anything from that bedroom!)

ANYWAY.

Another thought:

Does motivation matter? Or elapsed time?

If you’re trawling Buy Nothing groups looking for inventory, then you know what you’re doing. And you’re looking for a quick flip.

But if you get an item, fix it up, own it for five years, and then sell it, is that any different? Are you still bound to the Buy Nothing rules, even if your initial motivation wasn’t reselling?

I might be overthinking this

I have theories about why this might be the case, but I am a person who is very conscious about following the rules and doing the right thing, and this means I spend perhaps more-than-average amounts of energy considering moral conundrums. Ha.

It’s possible that it would be just fine for me to sell my quilt, and honestly, if I’d chosen to do that, no one would be the wiser (until now. Ha.)

But ultimately, I think I want to keep my quilt because I like it. 😉

(Full disclosure: I did consider whether or not that was selfish of me, because the person wanting to buy my quilt had a specific attachment to this exact quilt, while I just like it because I generally like quilts with white backgrounds. So I sort of wondered if I ought to be kind and send her my quilt because it means more to her than it does to me. THIS IS WHAT I’M SAYING ABOUT THE OVERTHINKING.)

What do you think? Is this a black and white issue, or do you see some gray area?