*This post is sponsored – but the thoughts and feelings are our own, and we only work with businesses we believe to be reputable and resourceful to our readers.
If you are a parent like me, you probably have boxes of old clothes, old toys, and old household items you haven’t had the energy or time to sell or donate. In comes 5miles , an online marketplace app to make life a bit easier for parents like me. At first glance of their app, I assumed it was another Craigslist-type product. I used to be an avid user of Craigslist; purchasing items and putting some of my own up for sale. Then a transaction gone wrong happened, and I have not touched that website since. I’ve tried other platforms that have opened up to the market but my same issues of safety & convenience were not solved. To my surprise after using the 5miles app, I couldn’t help but think a parent had to have helped design this product! The functionality and triple verification process for safety built-in are perfect for a single mother like myself who has had transactions go bad in the past. Simple & safe! Aside from offering a convenient, easy to use, and safe individual marketplace, the company is also big on bringing back the community engagement within neighborhoods. They work hard to teach families especially children about charitable giving and sustainable living. I am a huge fan of companies making a social impact and choose to make people more important than profit.
5miles doesn’t just talk the talk about community support and engagement, they actually walk the walk too! I recently attended their community event hosted at The Coop. It was an amazing set up for families to enjoy. They had a face painter, DJ, photo booth, popcorn machine, mommy juice(my favorite type of juice), snacks, etc. It was an evening created for parents to have fun with their children all while adding in the charitable element. 5miles encouraged and provided tips to parents on how to work with their kids to gather unused items around the house for donation to local charities. 5miles also has a donate category built right into their app. This service and feature is my favorite! It’s the best thing that could happen to a parent like me who has bags of old children’s clothes stacked in a corner waiting for me to make time to donate them. I don’t care to sell it, but I haven’t donated it either because planning for pickup and drop off just takes so much energy and time. We all know, we are so limited with time as parents. So 5miles makes it convenient by partnering up with local charities like SFsmiles to take care of pickup and drop for you.
Here is a list of more features & reasons on why I recommend using 5miles;
- NO PERSONAL ADS! Sticking true to their community focus!
- Meetup: Built-in Safe Exchange Area Locations (SEAL) to complete transactions (i.e. police stations) .
- Boost: Users have the control in having their sale items seen.
- Follow: Selecting specific items or sellers you wish to receive notifications about when they are posted.
- Couriers: Couriers providing pickup and drop off services are hired veterans to reinforce the safety component.
- Like: Ability to save the item until you are ready to purchase.
- Chat: no more email transactions! The in app chat feature makes communication easier for buyers and sellers.
Make sure to follow 5miles via their social media pages to stay up to date for their upcoming community events. I believe it’s important to support companies that are focused on providing community, safety, and convenience for families and their neighborhoods. 5miles does a great job in all these areas. Too many apps created during this generation are focused more on profit over people and sadly safety is not as big of a concern either. It’s refreshing to use a product that is people over profit and puts a lot of emphasis on finding ways to keep their users safe. I could go on and on, but I will leave it to you to try the app and see for yourself. 5miles is mom approved!
