GRATIS
Find and offer free things in Panama.
When a lease runs out in an Obarrio tower, the sofa that will not fit the next apartment has a couple of days to find a new home before it ends up beside the bins. People give away what still has use in it, from a fridge that still cools to the half box of floor tiles left after a renovation. Most of it is pre-owned, some of it new and never unpacked, and none of it costs anything. The person giving it sets the time, and whoever turns up when agreed, with a vehicle that fits and someone to help lift, drives off with it.
Free furniture and leftovers from homes being emptied or redone:
most of what gets offered comes out of an apartment someone is leaving or a house halfway through a renovation. A bed frame or a dining table that the next place has no room for, a fridge replaced by a newer one, a cot the youngest has outgrown. From building work come the odd quantities nobody wants to pay to store: a few zinc sheets, a stack of blocks, floor tiles from the same batch, a tin of paint opened once. After a move, the flattened boxes and pallets go too. If you would rather get some money for something, it belongs with the priced listings in furniture, appliances or baby. A litter of kittens or a dog that needs a new home goes to adopt a cat or adopt a dog, where the handover can be about the home the animal is going to rather than about who replied first.
A free sofa still has to come down the service elevator:
the item costs nothing, but getting it home does, and in an apartment building that is the part that goes wrong. Most towers in the city only let furniture move on the service elevator, booked through the building administration a day or two ahead, on weekdays and Saturday mornings, and often out through the parking level rather than the lobby. Before you say yes, ask which floor it is on, whether the elevator is booked and for when. Then measure it against what you are bringing. A three-seat sofa does not go in a sedan, and a hired pickup for one item can cost more than a cheap used one delivered to your door. Ask whether the giver will help carry or whether you need to bring a second person.
Checking a free fridge or mattress before you load it:
a fridge that was switched off weeks ago tells you little, so ask whether it was cooling right up to the day it was unplugged, and look at the door seal for splits. Carry it upright. If it has to lie down in the truck bed, let it stand for several hours at home before plugging it in. On a mattress, run a finger along the seams and the corners of the label: small dark spots there are the sign of bedbugs, and bringing those home costs far more than a new mattress. Particleboard wardrobes and bed frames are worth a look at the edges; swollen corners and stripped screw holes mean the piece will not survive being taken apart and put back together. Count tiles before you take them, and open paint tins, which go hard in a hot storeroom.
Giving away furniture before the lease runs out:
photograph it where it stands and put the measurements in the listing, with the faults stated plainly: the freezer no longer freezes, a drawer runner is broken, one leg is missing. Say which floor, whether there is a service elevator, the last day it can stay, and whether you will help lift. Hold it for the first person who confirms a time, not the first who sends a message, and give them the parking entrance rather than the lobby. A sagging mattress or a fridge that will not start is not a gift, and nobody will come for it. That kind of bulky item is what the AAUD, the urban cleaning authority, picks up in its periodic drives for mattresses, stoves and fridges, with the dates announced on its social media. The handovers that go smoothly are the ones whose first line already gives the floor, the elevator time and a request to bring someone to help lift.