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.)

Tara carter I do use those but always assumed the shoes had to be at leastwearable again. If thats not the case I'm glad to be wrong

BoiledSprouts

The chap was probably either a reseller or just liked reading. I have a friend who runs a 2nd hand book shop (everything is £1 and under - he makes a fortune) and most of his stuff comes from people clearing their houses of junk or after a relative dies. He always pays too.

He's doing so well out of it that he now buys his books from one central place a shipping container at a time, which has about 15,000 books in it.

Now more than ever people are buying books second hand and not wanting to pay over the odds for a paperback!

Yes noki, bring them in. As previous poster said we steam clothing and squirt febreeze at it too. Musty is fine. Sorry about your mother in law.

I always found that Jaques Vert clothing sold very well.

Stealth polar bear, take them to the tip and put them in the relevant recycling/disposal container.

Yes I suppose they'd go into scrap metal wouldn't thy. Don't know why but that doesn't seem right :)

I'm a teacher.
The local CS have a chap who volunteers to lift unsaleable goods and take them to the tip.
He sorts through it and brings me stuff he thinks the kids will like!
After a few teething problems (yes, you are very kind, but I cannot use soft toys that stink of fags!) we have a great set up. Slightly used pencils, old annuals, fantastic quality children's books, Xmas dec's, cars etc etc. It's working very well. On average I dump about a third of what he gives me, but that's still a lot less than would have gone to the tip direct from the shop!

Hmm, this thread has got me thinking. I do always bag up obvious rags for rags - and check that the shop takes them (ours does).

However, last year I donated items including:

• a good coat, out of style and with a couple of buttons missing
• a good jacket with a torn lining

I am of the mind that someone else might well be thrilled to find an item which would be expensive to buy new and that they could easily and cheaply buy new buttons (or cut them off another coat) or get the lining mended. But would these items just get chucked in the recycling? Seems a terrible waste .

Myself, I have bought Brio and Lego very cheaply in charity shops - a couple of pounds for what might have cost £100 new - presumably because the volunteers priced them as incomplete sets (being modular toys, that doesn't matter of course). One man's trash...

By the way, our student union used to take non-matching crockery and cutlery, bag it up into place-settings (plate, bowl, cup, knife, fork, spoon) and sell it to students, I think for a pound.

Good tip about animal sanctuaries taking old bedding and towels.

I used to be a volunteer in a charity shop. I enjoyed it except for two things- Number 1, I hated doing till work. Number 2 was having to count Jigsaw puzzle pieces. Health problems meant I found it difficult as my concentration and energy levels were poor but the manager rightly refused to sell incomplete puzzles. I couldn't help wish that the donors would count the pieces themselves before donating. On the other hand, sometimes there are situations when donors need to clear out houses in a hurry (eviction, bereavment etc) or they may be old or unwell themselves, so I see both sides of the issue.
We had some terrible things donated- someone donated a bag full of tat which had a dirty nappy in it. I like to think that bag was intended for dump but taken to the shop by mistake. Clothes with crusty stains on them- including vomit stains on baby clothes. Our charity shop was associated with a Church but once we were donated a bondage set with leather whip and furry handcuffs!

Would like to add though that we did also get many lovely things donated too! And the volunteer job was worth it. 4 hours a week which was the limit I could manage working anywhere.

Please remember to sign up for gift aid if you donate. About books. I used to have many 1000s of books and over the years have thrown away or taken to charity shops
I mostly buy from CS as well and I think pricing is crucial. My local Sue Ryder shop has a great selection, huge turnover, in alphabetical order all £1. I rarely manage to come away without spending £5. Yet in other CS where books are £2+ each I won't buy any.

I do recall thinking "maybe in Hell there is a special corner where the lost souls that go there have to eternally check 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles." Bit of a nasty thought, actually :D

Love our local Sue Ryder. Just down the road (and round two corners) from me

Books €1 and their big €1 clothes baskets I got a Jasper Conrad coat in there last week for €1.

Charity shop down the road in the other direction would sell it for €10 (the coat that is).

Our local Oxfam is daft: €5 for a book!!! I think they'd look for €20 for the coat.

No prizes for which shop has the biggest turn over.

Our best charity shops are Sue Ryder, Scope and the one for the local cat rescue.

We make it a bit of a family outing. DS2 loves getting LPs from them, DS1 comes out with a load of video games from forgotten consoles (which he still owns), DP usually finds at least one new tool or jigsaw and I spend a load on books. I'm a veracious reader but it's also useful for school. I'm an English teacher and even though each kid is provided with copies of texts to take home and use in class, someone always forgets so it's always handy to have a couple of copies of the text that I picked up for 50p or £1.

Good timing, saves me starting a thread

I have been having a really good sort out and slowly but surely filled 3 boxes for charity shop so far. I always judge it on would I be happy buying it, if not I wouldn't donate it. I also don't give out of season stuff because I'm aware it then needs to be stored

Anyway, I had thought now would not be a great time to donate, so can some of the people on here advise when their shops would be better able to take donations/more in need of donations. We do have a few close so I intend to split between them and not overload one shop

Smurfy it will depend on your local area. Generally shops are always in need of donations and will appreciate them, but chatting to staff will tell you if a shop often has to decline items that would be saleable. I usually give to one shop that I have a gift aid card for, mainly because the staff have always been really enthusiastic about any donations, but a couple times they have had a sign on the door that they can't take any donations that day.
Luckily there's two other shops within a few 100 yards.

If it's less than a house clearance you are offering, it's probably fine to go to just one shop unless it's very small (my chosen shop doesn't take books any more, except children's, one nearby takes no children's things at all. The former loves any textiles and metal, latter begs you not to give anything like that.)

I plan to visit a posh area soon and hit up their charity shops for clothes.

Vet surgeries like towels and bedding, too. I was clearing a house and the human shelters had enough towels and had no need for king-size bedding, but local vet was delighted so that saved me a drive to the tip. Though Freecycle might well have taken them - being in an urban area, people will collect anything if it's just round the corner!

A friend of mine is a deputy manager of a charity shop. She was on holiday and the manager was covering other shops so it was being covered by a part time assistant and volunteers for a lot of her week off. First day back she is at the till about 10 minutes after opening a customer buys a Le Creuset casserole dish worth about £100 for £5 as no-one doing the pricing that week knew what it was worth. She is still vexed by that almost three years later.

Anyway - totally agree with the OP.

The food from the 1980s- that was probably my mum. She's got dementia. Why she shipped it across the pond to you I don't know- maybe she thinks you're still starving because of WWII. (She told me once she remembered food rationing here in the US)

On the topic of jigsaw puzzle pieces, my grandparents complained about jigsaws not having all the pieces in a local charity shop they frequent. The staff who know them now give my grandparents the puzzles to check, and they bring them back the following week! I thought that was incredibly kind (and genius!) of the staff.

RainyDayBear that is indeed a GENIUS move by your grandparents' charity shop! Absolute genius.

What a fab solution RDB!

The thing is that charity shops are 1. Recycling and 2. support a charity. So even if you buy a T shirt for exactly the same price as Primark, you have still done two worthwhile things.

Having said that, cheap Tshirts are about the least appealing secondhand buy, as they rarely wear well. But plenty of other things do and they are always good value.

The Le Creuset thing is what worries me most - every week on the Antiques Roadshow you see someone who has picked up an ornament or some pictures in a charity shop for less than a fiver and it's valued at thousands. We don't have art experts or glass experts as volunteers in the shop and you can see how easily it can happen. I usually google makers marks or try to identify an artist if we get an original painting handed in but it's not always possible. And many of the volunteers I work with don't have smartphones and can't use the computer so just guess.

We do have a lady who knows about jewellery who comes in once a fortnight with her jeweller's magnifying glass and helps sort the silver/gold from the cheap stuff.

Luna On the other hand, the idea that among the prosaic stuff there might be an amazing valuable item is what attracts a lot of people into charity shops, and then they buy items once there.

My SIL makes some money picking up items from charity shops and car boots, and selling on eBay, but practically all of it is paying £2-5, making £5-15, minus P+p. It's quite a lot of work even if you are already geared up to send stuff in the post as cheaply and efficiently as possible. The shops don't have the manpower and want the turnover, so at most calling CitrusSIL and saying they've had a bunch of stuff she might want to look at, gives them the best return on investment.

Most of the finds on Antiques Roadshow etc that came from car boots/charity were purchased 20+ years ago when no-one really liked such items, and then only got their value years later.