Give it away
Give it away now?
Today was the first day of giving stuff to charity. In a great purge this summer, we have halved our library of books (this has been a psychologically cleansing act - when you choose to keep a book, it means more), and they are boxed up, ready to go. We are also, as mentioned before, jettisoning our entire pre-recorded video collection, which includes, among many famous feature films, music videos and TV shows, a full set of Hitchcocks, a full set of Woody Allens, a full set of Morse, The World At War, complete I, Clavdivs, four complete series of ER and on and on. That's hundreds of books and hundreds of videos, all in good condition, plus various other pieces of extraneous household, which are also boxed up and unused in many cases. It's a bonanza, and we decided to try and spread it out over a number of charity shops in the area. Here's how we fared:
Oxfam, Reigate A great start. Easy parking outside, and they were delighted to take two boxes of books, two boxes of videos and one box of various. One carload cleared. Back to base to reload.
Cats Protection, Purley Easy parking outside (20p for 15 minutes on meter). They wouldn't take a single item. Full up. Also, it looked like mostly clothes on circular rails in there. Pity, as it's one of our favourite charities.
Help The Aged, Purley Easy parking outside. They wouldn't take a single item either.
Oxfam, Purley Next door. The woman was awfully sorry but they were about to undergo a ten-day refurbishment and she couldn't take anything until this was completed. She said she'd love to take some books, if we could wait.
Children's Trust, Reigate Couldn't park outside due to Reigate one-way system, so pulled in on yellow line and put the hazards on, risking the wrath of pre-rush hour drivers and I went in first to see if they wanted anything. Closes at 4.30.
St Catherine's Hospice Closes at 4.30.
British Heart Foundation, Reigate At least they were open! The woman behind the counter gave an enthusiastic yes, so we started bringing the boxes up from where the car was parked, but as we arrived at the shop with the first load, another woman, presumbaly the manager, said actually, no, they weren't taking anything. Back to the car.
A hugely dispiriting afternoon. Now, I understand that space is of a premium at these shops, and that they're run for the very best of intentions, and that they close early, but from a purely selfish point of view, it's depressing to be turned away, for whatever reason. We'll try the Children's Trust shop again tomorrow, as I've been in there before and asked if they'd be interested and they were very keen. But after that, how much more driving are we prepared to do to offload all this good stuff? I am loath to throw any of it away. When we lived in Streatham, charities regularly did door-to-door collections, but not round here for some reason, otherwise this stuff would already be off our hands and hopefully doing some good.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 9:34 AM
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11 Comments:
It's saddening that you couldn't find any shops in Purley to take your stuff. I live nearby and the last time I went there it seemed to be mainly populated by charity shops. I suppose the shops have to sell all their copies of Jaws and Bob Geldof's Is That It? before they can accept any new stuff.
I know how you feel, Andrew. I'm still accumulating boxes of charity bric-a-brac, but now that there is only just enough room for a sideways walk down my hallway it's crunch time! Typically, the only door to door collection in my area during the past two months happened while I was away for a few days.
Have you tried calling any of the charities to see if they'll come and collect from you? A quick flick through my local yellow pages tells me that the Lincs Air Ambulance have a collection service, as do the Haven housing trust. Not sure their catchment area covers the south though....
The charity shops in Leatherhead are always very receptive to "stuff" - we emptied our loft a couple of months ago and they took all the stuff we needed to give away. Alternatively try Banstead High Street - there are literally dozens of charity shops there.
Blimey, Reigate's full of charity shops - I'm surprised you couldn't find more than one that was open (or had any space). Have you tried Redhill?
bring it up to northampton -- it seems that's the only shops we've got left now.
Most charities these days have large "warehouse" operations based out of town where stuff is sorted and priced and then distributed to the shops in the local area.
Hospices especially tend to do this.
Might be worth a quick look in the Yellow Pages to see if there are any near you.(They're usually on the local industrial/retail estate)
Where I live in Manchester it's regular sight to see piles of stuff dumped outside charity shops on a Sunday evening, despite most shops clearly asking people not to do so on their front door. So after been rumaged through by "folks with an eye for a bargain" and less of an eye for tidiness, some poor soul's job on a Monday moring morning is to wade through this before they can even put the kettle on. The arrogance of the givers in this case must be maddening, an act of generosity with an added f*** you. Nice!
Sorry for the typos above! Moring?
As stuart touches on, the "sorry, we're full" response would be more acceptable if you didn't know that there was stuff sitting on their shelves for weeks, months and even years at a time. I know they're all volunteers etc. but the best ones have some sort of stock control and realise that turnover is necessary. There are some items people no longer want to buy.
If this is the problems people encounter when trying to donate to charity shops, it's no wonder people dump stuff there over the weekends.
I was also of the opinion that the stuff you donate in one location is automatically sent to another in order to avoid the situation that your dear departed partner's clothes are staring you in the face at £5 a throw.
On a side point, I have found myself idly thinking in charity shops "If I was the kind of person who did that sort of thing, I could easily overpower the three or four old ladies on duty here and have it away sharpish with the cash." Being the kind of person who spends a fair amount of cash in charity shops means I'm probably not that kind of person.
Hmm. I worked in a charity shop for a year and I can tell you that at least in our place stock was not kept for longer than a couple of months- if you check the little tags they always have numbers on them from 1-52, that's the week they've come in. We would go through the racks and weed out old stuff. It would be cycled round another 2 or 3 stores in the area if necessary, before the charity would give up on selling the item. So there's generally room for new items, if the charities are disciplined enough. Just sounds like that was bad luck, Andrew.
If you want to donate things still, you can go to help the aged in Reigate. I work there on saturdays and we will accept everything, we have once had the hole shop with donations that you were treading on donations
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