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.)

In fairness, @glitterazi, doing a 2000 piece jigsaw is not a quick job - but people could count the pieces instead

Actually there's no point counting the pieces, as I discovered when I counted a 1000 piece one, twice. Big jigsaws like 1000 piece ones and bigger don't actually have 1000 pieces, usually its 1026 but it varies on the actual size (as in length and width) of the jigsaw and the size of the pieces.

This informative side note was brought to you by one bored ex charity shop worker.

I can't decide if that's the most interesting or boring fact I've heard today, Natsku

" If we put shoes or cds in our wheelie bin it wouldn't get emptied."
What on earth are you meant to do with old cds then? And what about shoes that have holes in.

For some reason the counting pieces thing made me think of that guy who spent several hours scrolling down an excel spreadsheet to discover how many rows there were

Apparently pressing ctrl ⬇️ achieves the same in about a millisecond

Is anyone able to name the charities who take rags? Although I agree ringing first and asking your local branch before taking a rag bag in would still be necessary.

I do think it's interesting what sells where. There's an Oxfam in a very posh part of London which sells sealed bags of mixed broken jewelry for a tenner, aimed at crafty types, which I think is genius, as they seem to get a lot of decent costume jewelry to put in the bags. (I go there as they have excellent pickings both in the toy dept and in the book dept.)

pannetone animal charities often want old towels (dogs don't care if the hem is a bit frayed) so it's worth checking in with your local ones. I have seen appeals for old towels by various rescue centres on twitter!

This thread is quite annoying! No sundresses in the winter, no used cookery books, but we'll take your cut glass china (full set only). It's one thing to not expect soiled goods and rubbish and it's another to expect people to only donate exactly the goods you want when you need them. All you are going to do is put people off donating.

I have bought most of my cookbooks in charity shops, and I buy fiction most weeks.

But someone needs to invent a jigsaw-piece counting machine for charity shops! I spent 5 days doing one over Christmas and was pretty pissed off to find it was missing pieces in the end. I do think the onus is on the seller to ensure all the pieces are there.

Ah but what if the right number of pieces are there but some are from another puzzle?

pannetone

Lego is valuable regardless on missing instructions (easily downloadable) or missing pieces. My advice to you is to sell it yourself on ebay or look up the sets you have for an idea of what they are worth.

My FIL bought an £80 lego set for £5 in his local CS because they had no clue. People will look in CSs for lego to resell for £££'s

When I volunteered in a charity shop about 8 years or so ago, they made most money each week by the amount they got from the ragman. That was a local hospice shop, but I now donate to Scope who always seem to welcome beanbags of stuff clearly labelled as rags.

The hospice shop had a basket of second hand underwear. Bras always sold well, especially those in bigger sizes.

We always used to do the childrens' jigsaws to see if all the pieces were there. The manageress's mother used to do as many of the bigger puzzles as she could, so that they could be sold as "complete". Other puzzles were sold at a slightly cheaper price, as they hadn't been checked.

Animal charities will usually be grateful for old towels, bedding etc.

British Heart Foundation operate several charity book shops, who always welcome new stock. These shops to me always seem to be brilliantly run with stock arranged in alphabetical order etc. BHF also have furniture shops, who will pick up goods if necessary. I have donated twice to mine, both times they gave me a two hour pick ups slot and arrived in that time period.

Would urge anyone who is a tax payer to register for gift aid with the shop(s) where they donate, as this will mean that the shop makes more every time they sell one of your donations.

Fwiw, my friend volunteers at a charity shop in the States, where everything is free to those who are deemed in need. The example I was given was someone recently released from prison who needed clothes and shoes for a job interview. I have no idea how this works in practice, but thought it was an interesting idea.

We get absolute crap donated to us. There is a tip a few miles down the the road. It costs the charity thousands of pounds a year to pay for the 'rubbish' to be disposed of.

We also regularly get people who steal.

Anyone with old duvets to get rid of, do ask your local dog or cat rescue. Our local Dogs' Trust was glad of ours.

And we found that Battersea Dogs' Home was glad to have a load of long grown up dds' old soft toys - they had so many (of course we kept the 'special' ones.)
As long as they're not stuffed with polystyrene beads then we were told that the dogs enjoy them, even if they eventually chew them up.

Charity shop volunteers are up there with nurses and carers for unsung heroes, in my opinion.

It was a lovely charity shop worker who helped me and my mum go through all my sister's clothing when we couldn't face doing it alone and she arranged for her furniture to be picked up too. She kept us updated on what had sold and where it had gone.

It was lovely and especially to hear things like "Oh your sister had lovely taste, these clothes will make someone really happy" or the fact that the sofa my sister and I chatted on all the time actually went to a family in need who will hopefully get the same pleasure we did from it.

It hurts me when people treat charity shops like a skip. Anything we donate we make sure it's all in working condition and not broken, or if it's clothing that it's still got its labels and that it's washed and dried.

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

Yes, duvets are absolutely loved by our shelter as well. They're always glad of donations. Same with soft toys and little cushions. The good thing is all three can be used by both dog and cat shelters and it's something a lot of people don't think of - they donate food/litter/bowls etc but don't think of donating their old winter duvet that a dog would absolutely love to lie on.

This hasn't put me off donating at all. It's made me think about asking shops a bit more specifically about what they do and don't want. Plus next time I do a clothes clearout I'll bag up into definitely sellable, definitely rags, and 'not sure'. And I really could do with a cook book clear out - donating only the immaculate ones would come naturally though, the ones with the pages stuck together are the ones I use!

As a Foodbank we have a thriving textiles sales section too. The stuff we get! Bin liners left outside in the rain, full of unwashed baby clothing, used cloth nappies on one occasion, books with covers torn off, porn, dirty pants, stained bed linen, damp duvets etc. The Foodbank proper gets mouldy food, stuff 25 years past sell by etc etc.

The raggers will take any clothing too worn to be sold, bed linen and towels likewise. They won't take BRIC a brac, duvets etc. So we either fill the small wheelie we have which is normally overflowing with tins (we get charged per collection and by weight, disposing of other people's crap costs us a fortune) or volunteers drive it to the tip bit by bit. We can't do a big run in the van, because we would get charged for that as well. I guess we should be grateful for being a free home clearance and waste disposal service.

I'm about to clear my MIL wardrobe as she died a few weeks ago. There are a lot of lovely items which are old but pristine, some never worn and most from jacques verte or Viyella. There are shoes with only minor wear but again they are very old (still in boxes and labelled though).

I do not have time to wash & dry everything or the money to have them dry cleaned. Does the fact that they have been hung in a wardrobe for the past 8 years and have a very slight musty smell mean that I should recycle instead of CS?

I do not have time to wash & dry everything or the money to have them dry cleaned. Does the fact that they have been hung in a wardrobe for the past 8 years and have a very slight musty smell mean that I should recycle instead of CS?

I would call up some local charity shops and ask. I know with my one we will wash musty clothes if they are otherwise really good quality and we know will sell for a good price.

I've never heard of a "rag man" before this thread.

I donate my old towels to my vet, they're always desperate for them. Pet shelter good idea too.

When I cleared my late dad's house BHF came round and took their pickings from the furniture and books (but were highly selective in which books they took). The rest went on Freecycle. Some bloke came round and seemed quite happy to fill his car with old paperbacks, not sure what he was planning on doing with them.

noki - I am sure your MIL's will be very gratefully accepted, most charity shops steam clothes before they are sold so the sort of clothes you are talking about can be easily freshened up and will sell well. I volunteer in a CS and Viyella etc always sells well - thank you.

I have to say hats off to all charity shop volunteers.

It used to get me down, in my PTA days, that people used to just treat our school jumble sale as a massive garbage clearing exercise.

How supremely arrogant to think that it's ok to dump broken and unusable items on someone else to sort for you.

If you are going to donate, make a meaningful donation! Something that is going to give a net gain to the charity.

And what about shoes that have holes in.

A recycling point in a Clarks shop?

For the poster asking if they should donate non matching crockery and bedding, our local church ran a collection for exactly that sort of stuff last year to give to a charity for setting people up in homes.

I had a brilliant clear out of our kitchen cupboards and drawers and donated loads of mugs and an entire crockery set that we seemed to be keeping for no reason at all.

I find the idea of donating used bras quite though. I thought bras lost their supportive properties after about 6 months - at least that's what the Bravissimo literature would have you believe - and I keep mine for significantly longer than that. So I'm not sure that they'd be of use to anyone else.

The stacks of clothes being bundled up and sold in Africa are killing the local textiles industry