“People Over Things”

Almost immediately after the calendar flipped to 2025 and local kids set off for school, parents were hit with a cold reality: a snowstorm significant enough to close schools was on the way.

Community-wide, snow gear was suddenly in high demand. With limited time, and perhaps a hesitation to invest in these items given Maryland’s hit-or-miss relationship with snow, people turned to their neighbors through local Buy Nothing Facebook groups.

The Buy Nothing Project began in 2013 in Seattle, Washington, by a group of community-minded individuals who endeavored to reduce waste. Their concept was simple: a platform that allowed neighbors to give or ask for items, time or support.

“It is like having a bigger neighborhood than what your actual neighborhood is, where you can walk next door and ask them for a cup of sugar or an egg. It’s that concept on a much larger scale,” said Lindsey Graves, one of the Benfield East Buy Nothing Group’s admins.

In the lead-up to Winter Storm Blair, the proverbial sugar and eggs were snow pants, winter coats, gloves and boots, of which approximately 250 items were posted to give.

Severna Park’s first Buy Nothing group launched in December 2019, just months before the COVID-19 pandemic would change how people shopped and gathered.

“That was really gratuitous timing,” joked Erica Rodriguez, who was one of the original group founders, and a current admin of Benfield East. “I could not have planned that better if I tried.”

Rodriguez learned of the Buy Nothing Project in the fall of 2019. Intrigued by the idea of a sustainable way to purge items she no longer wanted at home, she did some more digging and ended up attending training to start a group in her own community. She soon learned that Ashleigh Wyble, a neighbor of hers who she’d never actually met, was in the same training.

Together, they created the original Severna Park Buy Nothing group, which blanketed the community from Veterans Highway to Ritchie Highway.

Every post in a Buy Nothing group centers around one of these three tenants: give, ask or gratitude. Members are either giving or requesting an item, service or their time, or sharing their thanks for a prior request that was fulfilled by the group.

“No gift is too small, too weird, too niche, too special,” Rodriguez explained.

The original founders of the Buy Nothing Project coined the phrase “people over things,” and the Severna Park members have followed through on that edict since the group’s inception.

One facet of life that was put on pause in the spring of 2020 was birthday parties. A trendy substitute was drive-by celebrations, where friends and family would cruise by someone’s home and honk, hold celebratory signs and offer well-wishes. Graves recalls birthday drive-by participants being a common ask in the Buy Nothing group during that time.

“You’re driving by strangers’ houses, beeping your horn for somebody’s birthday because that was a way that you could still build community,” Graves said, calling the group “a really magical little spot through COVID.”

Rodriguez remembers a request from that era to retrieve a drone from a tree. Sure enough, a neighbor showed up with a ladder.

“That was, I think, critically important to see people coming together in a really weird, weird time,” Rodriguez said.

As needs change, so do the trending posts. When the largest supplier of infant formula in the country recalled products in 2022, it prompted a shortage that left families nationwide frantically searching for this essential need.

Cue Buy Nothing.

“All these people were like, ‘I have samples of formula. Let’s go,’ recalled Rodriguez of the many formula gives during that stressful time for parents of babies.

Not every trend is quite so serious. Both Rodriguez and Graves referenced a holiday pet costume that made the rounds one year. Pet owners would claim it, snap the requisite photo and then pass it along through the group.

“You can never predict what item is going to be the new trending commodity,” Rodriguez said.

More recently, someone generously offered up an unneeded Yeti cooler, a post that garnered dozens of responses.

“It’s shifted people’s mentality of, ‘This is a valuable item, but instead of selling it, I’m going to give it away,’” Graves said.

Graves has noted the mindset shift in her own home: her teenage stepdaughter will now request that she “check with the group” before buying her something new, she said.

Another teen was so interested in Buy Nothing posts, her mom used it as motivation for her to log some driving hours. Her daughter could request any giveaway she wanted, but she had to drive to retrieve them.

This mom recently issued a gratitude post in her group; thanks in part to Buy Nothing giveaways, her daughter completed her practice hours and passed her driving test.

The Buy Nothing Project suggests that once a group outgrows the mission, it should “sprout” a new one. Local participation here has inspired quick and frequent sprouting.

Today, there are four Severna Park Buy Nothing groups: Benfield East, Benfield West, Old County Corridor and Severna Park East. Membership totals more than 4,000. Eight community volunteers manage these pages, which see dozens of posts per day. Admins are planning for the Benfield East group, which currently has a membership of over 1,400, to sprout again soon.

In an effort to keep these groups hyperlocal, members are required to live within set geographical boundaries. As requests piled up from people who lived near, but not in, Severna Park, Rodriguez tapped into her network to assist in getting groups started in Arnold, Cape St. Claire and Pasadena.

Rodriguez credits Buy Nothing with connecting her with many of her neighbors, and she lauds its ability to serve all people at any point in their lives - from growing families to downsizing retirees, and everyone in between.

“(It’s) literally for everybody. It’s awesome,” she said.