AIBU to issue a plea on behalf of charity shop volunteers?

[LunaLoveg00d]

We know it's the decluttering season and we know that lots of us are chucking out stuff the kids have grown out of or have got bored of to make way for the new stuff they got over Christmas.

But please, no charity shop wants a jigsaw with bits missing, a colouring book with half the pages scribbled on, a doll which has been given a "haircut" by its previous owner, trainers encrusted in muck, odd socks or cushion covers which someone has spilled red wine over.

Just CHUCK THE BROKEN AND MINGING STUFF IN THE BIN - if it's not good enough to be in your house any more, why would you think it would be good enough for other people's??

(Frazzled after a morning trying to sort out the lovely, quality donations from the post-Christmas crap.)

Also a pain is the stuff that is left outside when the shop is closed

Yes I was walking to my local railway station yesterday morning (before 7am) and passed a guy in a black SUV (I can remember the reg no) parked with all 4 wheels on the pavement and dumping bags outside a charity shop.

I wonder if I could report him for fly-tipping (and the parking on the pavement where there are double yellow lines). But I'm guessing the shops would report it themselves (even if they don't know a reg no there's CCTV as it's the town centre) but don't get anywhere. Or they think that there might be diamonds among the dross?

People don't go to tips because of ludicrous opening hours and the resulting queues. And the fact that some councils ask for proof of residence etc. It's stupid. There should be a common policy for the whole country - everyone shoudl be able to use any tip, and recycle the same stuff. And the opening hours need to be longer if you want to have any chance of combating fly-tipping.

Just a guide.

If you are donating, please consider if it's wearable or usable and in good condition and in season. Will someone buy it? We have to store all our big coats and jumpers come April which takes time and costs us in the long run. We also stock lots of vintage which sells well - particularly home wear and decent vintage fabrics, so don't be shy with that 70's brown Denby ware. Good quality China, vases and collectibles sell well. Vintage ladybird books - too but take my advice you will get quite a bit on eBay if you can be bothered.

Anything dirty, broken or damaged/stained we have to throw. We don't take in sets of glasses less than 4 unless they are quality- crystal ect. Please don't bring in that mulberry handbag you picked up for £20 on holiday in turkey - we can't sell anything counterfeit. Cook books have to be in new condition. Good condition recent chick lit/ man lit - esp lee child paperbacks sell like hot cakes.

We also have experts who come in to look at any donations we are unsure about and we have an eBay unit for the top quality items.

Never leave anything outside the shops, it could get damaged or stolen and is also could be considered fly tipping.

Carry on donating- it costs £17,000 a day to run our hospice and think about volunteering, it's a good way to get back into the work place or like me, learn new skills.

tax

Thanks thats useful

I dont donate anything broken or dirty!!! Gross!!

I do donate clothes i wouldnt personally wear like dd over the knee fashion socks but they are clean and i assume that they can be put in a rag bag

I take on board that rag bags can be marked...good idea

We had a major clear out when moving home a while back and it took several trips to different shops to work out which shop preferred which items. I am an avid reader and had loads of paperbacks, all in good condition and generally only read once or twice and one shop lady said in a really disappointed voice "but they've been read" which floored me a bit. Took them away and gave them to a different place who was thrilled.

I also had endless pairs of children's shoes (having had twins you can imagine there was a huge pile) - touted them around a bit and then found somewhere which would send them on to Eastern Europe as they couldn't resell them but they were in good enough nick to be re-used. It took a bit of effort but was really satisfying. As I sorted through it all I used to pause and ask myself "would I buy this?"

Why would a charity shop refuse to take books that had been read? It makes no sense.

My thoughts exactly "tectonic"! I was so surprised I just said something along the line of "oh, ok" and went elsewhere......

Yes to the vintage/retro - one of our best sellers is the 70s tall coffee pots with matching cups. People LOVE them. Also things like vintage embroidered tablecloths, tablerunners, crochet doilies.

Agree too about the counterfeit - we cannot sell faked items and we do see a lot of "Gucci" bags and "Hermes" scarves, 99% of which have to go in the bin. Non-designer retro scarves sell well though. As does clothing which maybe isn't hugely fashionable.

Boiledsprouts

"I'm afraid I am one of those people who leave donations outside out of hours (no sign saying not to) because there's no way I could get to a charity shop during working hours."

What about Saturdays? If you can't - please don't fly-tip your donations on the pavement. You are just making more work for the volunteers in the shop. Put your stuff in a bag that comes through the door for collection (check it is a legit charity first).

I didn't ask for a refund but had to ask the shop to check kids games in the future... I bought a Peppa Pig game for my daughter which had Peppa MISSING... ok, we can still play with the 3 other counters, but the main one is gone!
that would have taken 5 seconds to check...

My daughter is learning to appreciate charity shops, if she doesn't have enough pocket money for a new toy we pop to Oxfam and usually she can get something for 99p - only if she really wants something, we are also trying to teach her if she saves up a few weeks she WILL get enough for the new toy...

We also have a one in, one out policy for larger things outside of birthdays and christmas so if she really wants a big toy, she will bring one back to the charity shop the next day

Nope sorry - I work seven days a week and am disabled (and was given less than a week to move house) so if the charity shop want my mainly very expensive and good quality items they're just going to have to suck it up. It's either leave them outside shop or unworn genuine Prada and some 40 unwrapped CDs go in the wheelie bin. I do not get "bags coming through my door for charity" and certainly not in the short time period I had to clear the house.

I've seen items I've left on the pavement on display in the window so obviously they don't have a problem.

If you had some seriously good stuff and were disabled I would think a shop might send someone round if you rang them up and explained the situation.

It is common sense really. Unfortunately, when you have had to sort through some filthy, broken and sometimes dangerous items, you realise that common sense is very much lacking in many cases. Maybe just laziness too.

Luckily there are also plenty of lovely, sensible people who chose to donate sellable items so charities can survive and make money.

Although, if everyone could refrain from using overfilling those very cheap, thin binbags that fall apart as soon as you touch them, emptying their entire contents all over the floor, that would be most helpful.

I watched the Mary Portas programme where she went into charity shops to try to turn them around. Some of the things that people had left were utterly disgusting. One person had left a bin bag that contained a pair of knickers with a used sanitary yowl attached. I mean - who the fuck does that?

Sorry *towel

It's extremely unlikely a charity shop could send someone round at 11pm, which is when I get home from work (temporary work project - I don't always work such long hours). And I really didn't have time to faff around with phoning people and making appointments when I had a week to move house. Under those circumstances it was wheelie bin or leave outside charity shop.

I really don't see how it's that much extra work for them to have to carry the bags an extra 10 feet from the covered alcove by the front door to inside the shop. If I did drop off during shop hours they'd have to do practically the exact same amount of work. And they obviously don't mind or there'd be a sign or they wouldn't have put the items on display.

Whenever we donate toys, boardgames, etc, to Oxfam, I get DS to set everything up ready to play, so we can check what's there before we then break it down and put it back into the box. I then stick a post-it note on it saying exactly what is still in the box - and because DS is That Sort Of Kid it usually even still includes the instructions!

My favourite type of charity giver

British Heart Foundation will collect from your house, BoiledSprouts. I think it's a minimum of two black sacks to make it worth their while, but how could that be less hassle than parking it outside their door?
Dd volunteers in a charity shop and if the bags dumped outside get wet they will be disposed of.

The other thing is definitely about seasonality. its no good delivering swim suits in September or winter coats in June. They just don't have storage these days and they just go straight to rags and whilst generally they are paid for this the processing time and effort if its not marked for rags is significant and can outweigh the benefits when the price is low.

Some charities do have storage though - the charity shop I volunteer in has a storage unit in the middle of town which is shared with all of the other charity shops in the chain in the area. We are currently bagging up all quality summer stock and sending it to storage to return in March, after that we'll be doing the same with winter stock. We're also currently boxing up any Christmassy stock so that can go to storage too.

Storage does cost money though, and every time someone goes to take bags or get bags out there's van hire costs too.

I got rid of all my old shoes when I was diagnosed and treated for a foot condition.

I tied myself in knots as the shoes showed signs of wear.

I sold five pairs of shoes after washing/polishing them for hours.

Passed four pairs onto family after doing the same thing.

Sold another, barely worn pair and then passed the remainder to a charity shop.

This happened. I am strangely proud that someone thinks my old stuff is worth as much as that.

I always apologise when I hand stuff over, when I saw the Mary Portas series I was appalled.

BHF absolutely do no collect at 11 o' clock at night! Would be ludicrous to ask.

And I'm sorry but with one week to find somewhere to live and pack up a household I'm not going to waste a bunch of time using my already too-short lunch break to phone people and make appointments for someone to drive miles to collect things, when it takes me less than a minute to dump bags in a safe dry private covered walkway outside the charity shop practically next door.

Like I've said twice now the charity shop do not mind and have DO NOT have rules about not leaving donations outside of hours. There is no point inventing an arduous and time-consuming "solution" to a problem that does not exist.

@Snatched Pencil - I know the OP mentioned jigsaws with missing pieces, but I suspect she was meaning a significant number of missing pieces - 1 or 2 missing from a 2000 piece jigsaw is not that big a deal, imo - even if someone goes to the effort of counting the pieces before handing it in, they could make a mistake - that's just being human.

But if a jigsaw has a lot of pieces missing - enough to be obvious (might only be one piece if it is a child's 9 piece jigsaw, or could be a couple of hundred from a 1000+ piece grown up's one), then it is worthless.

And the OP's point was much bigger than jigsaws with a missing bit - you surely cannot think it is acceptable for people to donate something that is obviously broken or filthy? Yes, the volunteers are donating their time, but that does not mean it is OK to make them search through skiddy underwear or filthy items, or to waste their time sorting out broken stuff.

I used to volunteer in a charity shop, so I only donate things that are potentially saleable! My old manager took the occasional theft in her stride, the logic being someone who had stolen from a charity shop must really have needed it.

Some people do donate any old crap. If you wouldn't give it to a friend or family member as a hand me down, what makes you think a charity shop can sell it? When clearing out I always have three boxes: charity shop, recycle and bin.

Different shops take different stuff - some will have plenty of storage and always love donations even if some go to a different branch. Others have no space out back and have to be fussy. Where I live, many people are really skint so will buy all sorts of bargains that wouldn't sell in other places (opened boxes of dishwasher tablets, promotional T-shirts, bras, clothes with a missing button, and all sorts of items with signs of wear that just wouldn't shift in a more upmarket shop).

Often the managers are on the phone to head office that no, they aren't going to follow the advice that they shouldn't bother selling 'rubbish', because people want it and also they don't have enough donations to fill the shelves otherwise. And similarly, stop trying to send them yet more brand-new craft items made by Indian women or Amazonian tribes or whoever, because most locals couldn't afford them and if they do want them, there's shops next door selling such things for half the price!

Gave piles of stuff to a local shop yesterday and they were well chuffed. The shop was half empty of stock. Most people are using CEx and Music Magpie if they can. Also parking is a problem, the guy who drives a van for all the shops has been ill for months, so it's hard to get stuff there (though given the council won't take more than one small wheelie-bin a week and charges £20 for every 1-5 bags/items extra, you can see why people try to convince themselves a charity shop will want some of their rubbish...)

I have often warned the staff that many of the clothes not in my 'rags' bag ought to be in there, but that they are at least clean and it meant DP was willing to donate them. They've actually sold many of them for £1 or 50p each, and apparently the homeless shelter visit and pay the same as the rag man for wearable-but-unsaleable clothes.

Some charity shops have storage - Red Cross ones box up things they can't sell in their individual shop like out of season clothes and 'unfashionable' ones and they get sent to a central storage unit for use in emergencies (sent over to conflict zones, used to temporarily clothe flood and fire victims etc.) so definitely try Red Cross for those things but they have rules so no fur or leather or camouflage/military appearance (for the ones to be sent to the central place, individual shops might very well sell them).

Some shops won't accept books because they have so many already and don't have enough shelf space for more. The one I worked at had to turn away books except for ones we knew would sell quickly like local history books or ones that were really high quality and in good condition that could be sold for a good price. We accepted clean bras in good condition (because old ladies seem to have no issue with buying second hand bras).

Retro stuff is always loved and can sell for a good price often. Old copper pots and pans that aren't good for cooking with any more sold well as decorative items.