BY: ROB HOFFMAN
In 2005, Kyle MacDonald made two critical decisions:
First, he was going to own house.
Second, he wasn’t going to pay a single penny for it.
Like any true millennial, the idea of working a job to afford a home seemed like a major inconvenience to MacDonald, and he didn’t want any part of it. Pervaded by a familiar and hopeful notion—“there HAS to be an easier way,”— MacDonald became determined to MacGyver his way into a respectable home without the help of any silly job.
As he sat daydreaming at the foot of a clunky 1990’s computer monitor in his dismal little Montreal apartment, he remembered an old childhood game he used to play called bigger, better. The objective of the game was to start with a simple miscellaneous object, and try to barter your way into the best possible possession.
MacDonald’s eyes fell to a small red paperclip sitting on his desk and lightning struck. He knew what had to be done.
MacDonald put the paperclip online and offered to trade it for something bigger or better, with a note that, “if you promise to make the trade I will come and visit you, wherever you are, to trade.”
It took Kyle MacDonald a year and only 14 trades to turn one small red paperclip into a 2-story farmhouse.
Over the following year, starting on July 14th 2005, the following 14 trades transpired:
1. He traded one red paperclip to a young woman in Vancouver for a fish-shaped pen.
2. He traded the pen for a hand-sculpted doorknob that looked like a face in Seattle, Washington.
3. He traded the doorknob for a Coleman camping stove in Amherst, Massachusetts.
4. He traded the camping stove for a Honda generator in California.
5. He traded the generator for an empty keg of beer, an IOU for filling the keg with a beer of choice, and a neon Budweiser sign, in Maspeth, Queens.
6. He traded the keg for a snowmobile in Quebec.
7. He traded the snowmobile for a two-person trip to Yahk, British Columbia.
8. He traded one of the spots on the Yahk trip for a moving van.
9. He traded the moving van for a one day recording contract with Metalworks in Mississauga, Ontario.
10. He traded the recording contract for a year of rent for a home in Phoenix, Arizona.
11. He traded the year of rent for one afternoon with Alice Cooper.
12. He traded one afternoon with Alice Cooper for a KISS motorized snow globe.
13. He traded the Kiss snow globe for a speaking roll in the film, Donna on Demand.
14. He traded the roll in Donna on Demand for a two-story farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan.
With a three-part combination of creativity, ambition and risk, MacDonald pulls off the inconceivable and successfully bartered his way from a paperclip to a two-story home. However, I won’t conclude that this shear victory of life is available to just anyone. Maybe one day modern currency will succumb to a system of bartering. Or maybe MacDonald’s experience was just a glitch in the Matrix.
Still, MacDonald’s story reminds us the importance of embracing adventure, even the most frivolous and bizarre. The more chances we take, the more opportunities we’re given. Then, when fate extends to us an olive branch out of the darkness, we should be prepared to lay down our weapons and grab it, lest we bypass fortune in our hardheadedness.
MacDonald is now a successful blogger, and author of his own book which documents his red paperclip adventures—an inspiring read which encourages us all to one day find a symbolic red paperclip of our own, and to never again question the power of Kijiji or Craigslist.