I just saw a great username on our local freecycle board: bountifulgarage. That seems to sum up the whole concept of freecycle.
Freecycle groups are extremely local – when I lived in a rural Virginia town, population 9,000 we had a group just for our town. It was active and you knew everything listed was no more than 10 minutes away. The nearest place that craig’s list would cover was about 50 miles away, and CL was not very active in that area.
If you live in a densely populated urban area for which craigslist has extensive coverage, their free section might be the same or even better. But an awful lot of people don’t fit that bill, and for them freecycle is not only the better game, its actually the only game.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
I tend to make some rash purchases and then realize I haven’t touched the stuff for months. Needless to say, my neighbors have gotten some goodies thanks to me and freecycle. 
I use both Freecycle and the Craigslist free section. So far, I have gotten rid of fabric scraps, baby bottles, too-small sheets, a brand-new cloth diaper, black-eyed susans, a nightstand, a drafting table, a broken-down coffee table, and various unused kitchen items. I have taken exactly one thing - Sims 2 Pets expansion pack.
My local Freecycle doesn’t require that you receive emails, thank og. I just check it out every couple of days.
Wow, I shoulda tried freecycle for the TI-83! I spent $$ on one for my kid.
That said: Yeah, Freecycle is a great way of getting rid of stuff that you no longer need.
The day we went to pick up the living room furniture from my mother’s house, I posted our old sofa / loveseat on freecycle. By the time we got back (6 hour round trip) we had a taker. He came over, helped us bring in our “new” furniture from the truck, we all hauled the “old” furniture to the truck, and drove it over to his house.
We’ve given away outgrown kid toys / games / software. Bathroom shelving we no longer needed. A wi-fi adapter and non-working router (the taker wanted to play around with it and didn’t want to ruin a good one).
The big frustration: People who beg for something, then never show up.
I loved Freecycle! I’ve received a gorgeous chinoiserie coffee table, lots of nice glasses/plates/nice dinnerware, tons of books, and a stunningly beautiful set of individual-sized silver pepper shakers and salt dishes to put around the table at formal dinners. I’ve given away a really beautiful erotic statue that wasn’t to my taste, some other artwork, tons of books, and other stuff I can’t remember.
Unfortunately, in my area, you have to act so fast that following it was distracting me from things like working.
I’ve used freecycle in the past, but I gave up on it because it was too much work and too unreliable to be useful to me. Now when I have stuff to give away, if it’s big it goes on craigslist to get someone to haul it away, and if it’s small it goes in a bag for a thrift store.