The Abridged version:
- Building on the little free library trend, trinket trading boxes are popping up in some local neighborhoods.
- Social media platforms, especially TikTok, have become places trinket traders can connect to share their experiences.
- At the E Street House, the trinket trade box is one of a number of installations where neighbors can slow down, have fun and get to know each other.
This story was reported by a member of the Abridged by PBS KVIE Community Reporters program. The Community Reporters program empowers local residents to report stories with guidance and support from the Abridged editorial staff.
Little free libraries are a familiar sight in local neighborhoods. These tiny wooden houses on front lawns are filled with books that cut across genre and age group and are completely free to take. Now, some are taking the trend further with little free trinket trade boxes.
Little free trinket trade boxes are meant for those well-loved little knickknacks that are ready to be passed on to others in the community. These eclectic boxes of joy and fun hold everything from key chains to pins, mugs, stickers, crochet plushies, trading cards, jewelry, writing materials, candles, small figurines and more.
These tiny community hubs have been popping up across the Sacramento area, and the rules are simple: Take a trinket, leave a trinket. Have fun. Be respectful.
The E Street House trinket trade box
On the corner of E and 20th streets in Boulevard Park sits Rachel and Adam Rix’s home, known as the E Street House. Along with other sidewalk installations such as the Inspiration Station, trivia boxes, a poetry sign, a music box and a community bench, there’s the E Street House trinket trade box.
The couple’s first community installation, the Inspiration Station, was established six years ago. It is a submission box to the left of the house where community members can submit their original artwork, including poems, prose and drawings. Once something is submitted, Rachel and Adam display it right there for community members to see.
“As a writer, I wanted to try to be part of the writing community,” Rachel Rix said. “And so I put the Inspiration Station as part of literary citizenship. … But also, COVID was happening right around that time, and the world really needed love. So we were trying to put out something nice and lighthearted and encouraging.”
Other interactive installations have followed, and the couple document their efforts on their @estreethouse TikTok account.
“We just kind of kept adding stuff because of the positive feedback we get from every little thing we do,” Adam Rix said. “From the little trivia boxes or music boxes. Everyone just always says thank you when they come by. It’s so nice just to see people slow down, talk to each other.”
The E Street House’s trinket trade box, arguably its most popular front yard installation, came around the 2025 holiday season. The Rixes fixed up an old, discarded skeleton of a little free library and planted it out in front. Unfamiliar with trinket trading or trinket trade boxes, they thought their new community box could be a place where kids from the neighborhood could find small, fun things or for community members to share ornaments during the holiday season.
Alongside the couple, Paulette Greenhouse and Zandybel Vega have supported the growth of the trinket trade box. The box had been sparse for its first few months but started gaining more traction after a few of videos were shared on TikTok.
“At the time I had just been in this decluttering phase of my apartment where I’m just going room by room and cleaning things out of personal need and growth,” Greenhouse said. “It was a lot of pins, buttons, patches, just tiny random small items that I started putting in a bag with the intention of getting rid of them. So I brought it all and then just set it up. I think by then the box was empty. I just made a stupid little video that I just thought was kind of funny, and my friends would see and just kind of giggle.”
An online conversation and trinket trading started between Greenhouse and Vega. Their trades, documented via social media, started gaining more attention from others online, eventually tapping into an active community of trinket traders on TikTok.
“More people started noticing because of her videos,” Vega said. “And then, I started posting videos. The word got out, and then more people started coming in.”
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“Rachel and Adam started something very whimsical, something very beautiful to share with the community. And then Paulette and I started being part of that. This is our way of giving back,” Vega added.
What was once an empty box now sees consistent traffic, day and night.
“It brings us joy to see people just smiling,” Rachel Rix said. “I wish you guys lived here, because you could then see at like 10 p.m. people are giggling and smiling.”
Building a trinket trading community
A surge of community building and connection has come from the little free trinket trade box, both in-person and online.
“I don’t know if when we started doing all this stuff, we had an intentionality of community in mind,” Adam Rix said. “We just want to put something nice out.”
There are more than a dozen other trinket trade boxes in the Sacramento area, too, including locations in Carmichael, Del Paso Heights, Natomas, Roseville and more. And the people behind them all support each other.
“It’s really cool because we’ve made friends with the other trinket boxes, and they come and visit and they leave their handmade stuff, their trinkets to support us,” Vega said. “And then we go and support them. And it’s like building that community.”
There are folks who make handmade trinkets and gifts with the specific intention to share them with the community through trading.
“I love when I see handmade things, because you can see the love and the effort and the time that was put into it to gift it to someone,” Vega said. “I feel like that’s the greatest show of love.”
The love and community is not only felt through the act of trinket trading. It is felt through the interactions that happen as a result of visits to the trade boxes.
“I was having a bad day … and I got a knock on my door,” Rachel Rix said. “I come to the door and open it, and there’s this girl. She’s like ‘I just want to say thank you. I wanted to meet you and say thank you so much for the trinket box.’”
Trinket trading is a cost-free activity that just about anyone can engage in. People are able to connect and create memories with one another in an accessible and sustainable manner.
To some, trinket trading is a form of mutual aid. It is the act of sharing resources with one’s community for the sake of connection and community well-being.
“During the pandemic I was part of a ‘Buy Nothing’ group on Facebook,” Greenhouse said. “Essentially the rules are respect, and not selling items. It’s just offering up things. I was part of that during the time, and I remember that gave a lot of joy, and that sense of community.”
Worldwide whimsy
Beyond trinket trading, the Sacramento area is home to other types of sidewalk installations. The region has a plant stand in Citrus Heights and a dog stick library in Roseville, plus a key chain library and a mini art gallery, along with plenty of little free libraries.
The Worldwide Sidewalk Joy website includes an interactive map where you can see all types of installations in the local community — and all over the world.
Across the country, installations run the gamut from trinket trade boxes, free seed libraries and free art galleries to mug exchanges, free puzzle huts and Da Slippha Library in Maui, Hawaii. Da Slippha Library has your back if one of your sandals breaks or goes missing.
These local community installations have a long-distance reach when it comes to connection and community building. Rachel and Adam Rix have received trinkets from as far as Texas to stock the trinket box.
“Someone drove all the way from Davis to deliver something from his friend who lives in Texas or something, to make a video about it,” Adam Rix said. “There’s all these ways people connect and are really deeply appreciative just for something that’s small. It seems like it goes a very long way.”
Anyone looking to add whimsy to their own neighborhood and nurture community ties can install their own sidewalk joy spot.
“We will often see in the comments ‘I wish I could put this up in my area.’ But they’re worried that someone will steal everything, clean it out, or vandalize it,” Rix said. “And those things might happen, from time to time, but even if there’s any setbacks the positive feedback is far, far greater.”
Magui Martinez is a member of the Abridged Community Reporters program.