I don’t know if this is a national thing or just done in my local area. For a couple of weeks now people have been putting out boxes of tinned food with signs saying ‘take what you need, leave what you can’. All very nice and lovely.
Except now there is at least one in every street (3 on mine) with constantly increasing levels of stock. It started out with tinned goods and loo roll then extended to nappies and baby milk and now fresh fruit and loaves of bread. Various posts on local pages thanking shops for their generous donations, we now have one pantry which offers shells and rope that have been donated by local shops. People have started dumping old furniture, old baby clothes and dvds in piles on the pavements with ‘take what you need 😁 🌈’ signs attached.
I’m probably being fairly miserable about the whole thing but today a local group posted a moan on FB about people going out of their way and spending money and time to create these ‘pantries’ and no one is using them. We have a very active food bank, it’s a small town and to be perfectly honest the most in need are generally fairly well looked after (I volunteer there and we have plenty of stick and it’s really easily accessible). Now people are buying all sorts of perishable goods, leaving them out in the rain and get stroppy that people won’t take things that no one has asked for. I just know these will be the same people that a few weeks ago were complaining about people stockpiling and people leaving the house unnecessarily. Now they’re getting cross because people won’t leave their house to pick up an old tin of chickpeas and a video of Titanic because they want to get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.