Charity shops, I apologise

[thedevilinablackdress]

I've loved charity shopping for over 30 years, but like many I've long mixed it with online second hand shopping.
The stories in this Guardian article are not new to those of us who've read threads on here, work in the shops or know people who do.
I never sell online myself and am a very mindful donatter, but my own eBay addiction and Vinted dabbling is contributing to this in a way.
Shops won't want to discourage donations, but it seems more push back on the mountains of crap is needed.

www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/oct/13/people-sell-their-best-stuff-on-vinted-how-charity-shops-became-a-dumping-ground-for-unsellable-clothes

which explains why they sell on vinted/ebay rather than donate, but not why they then donate shite.

Definitely and we notice a difference towards the end of the month before people get paid .

Donations that are rejected often end up dumped in front of the fire door, blocking the exit causing a fire hazard and getting rained on and peed on by foxes. Vols then have to try and get it in the bin which the charity pays for to be taken away.
There is a fundamental disconnect between the shop and the public often. Inc the misconception that they exist to provide cheap items to the public.

Our local Oxfam has a very strict admissions policy. On any given day the door has lists of what they are and aren't taking, and the exchanges between staff and people donating are pretty surprisingly hostile. I've heard people twice say they'll just go elsewhere, and the staff seem perpetually on the verge of either shouting or tears.

Across the road, local volunteer-staffed charity shop takes just about everything, sells it all cheap, is friendly, and does a roaring trade.

I think it's the model. I don't think blaming the public and berating them for not giving quality donations will work.

Maybe commercialised charity shops have had their day.

Yes, whilst I would never donate dirty things this was my understanding too, that they can still make some money out of “rag bags”, so I have definitely handed over old, worn items as well as better quality ones.

I ask if they want what I have when I donate. That seems to keep the frustration down.

You wouldn't rock up to a friend's house with a bag of clothes and books and be offended if she wanted to accept some but not all and wanted to check it first. Why be offended if a charity does the same?

Obviously there's a lot of crap in charity shops, but certainly there's good stuff too. It just may not be in the right size.

Ppl can't really moan about lack of quality- because really good quality donations will only come from ppl who can't be arsed to ebay/vinted something, or cba to return the item in some cases.

I know of one organisation that sells online as well as in their shops so they probably aren't the only ones.

Indeed.But do you want to buy copies of Enid Blyton’s St Clares and Mallory Towers printed in 1990 with yellow pages, foxing and damaged spines?

I think you missed my point? Which was that we need a decent recycling scheme for textiles like we have for paper card glass and tins etc. Ideally collected with the rest but if not then having plenty of bins to put it in. I don't drive so the tip isn't an option (its not even in my borough) and the poorer you are the less likely you are to have a car to get there.

We sell online too. Imagine all the chains do.

@Sunbringer if they closed the shops, where would the donations to sell on Vinted come into their systems?

BHF has an eBay shop as well as retail, which makes sense as they accept large items like furniture. but they will also do pick ups and house clearances etc so that's their 'supply' route.

I dont think anyone is berating the public for not giving ‘quality’ donations. We just don’t want their dirty, broken, torn and damaged crap. Quite frankly am not sure why people don’t understand that.

then someone can take over the empty premises to open a salon, betting shop, or Turkish Albanian coke front barbers

Oh but they do.

So many times I lugged a box of books into the back shop to find it was copies of encyclopaedias printed in th 60s, a Windows 95 manual, Standard Grade exam prep books (exams scrapped in 2013), tax/law/accounting texts which were way out of date.

Even if you are talking about novels, nobody is going to buy a yellowing copy of something by Jilly Cooper or the 50 shades woman with rips or tears in the pages or cover.

What one person sees as shite those of us with less money see as a perfectly good item of clothing (I’m not including things that are ripped or stained!) that means less landfill and they’re hoping someone else will need it/ see its usefulness. People saying close charity shops. Yes let’s close all the shops, I mean online is doing the world so good as it is, we should mss as we everything online

Sounds like a great donation to me. I would give the charity a ring in advance to check they are taking donations and best day to donate. I know it’s a faff to check in advance but we don’t always have a lot of volunteers in and if makes it much easier for us.
items don’t need to be in any way posh and black bars are fine.

Not necessarily the same people?

I guess we all have too much "stuff". Not quite sure what the answer is. I used to do a lot of charity shop shopping but certainly in the shops I go into clothes are much more expensive than vinted. So I go for vinted.

Another charity shop volunteer here - I can confirm much of what is being said here. We get swamped with poor quality, unsaleable (dirty/damaged etc) donations but we do open every bag and sort through it, which can be a bit of an eye opener!! We get supplied with gloves and really need them sometimes.

For example, a recent donation of two large black bags of women's clothing, gave us just 3 saleable garments, out of around 50 in total, with the rest going to rag. This is fairly typical. We also rag certain categories of clothes regardless of condition if we are over stocked with them. Currently, that includes women's jeans: yesterday I ragged 12 pairs of Levis in clean and wearable condition.

We do get high end items and have an Ebay function for these (a recent example being a beautiful LV bag). Staff and volunteers are allowed to have "first dibs" on items but only do so on rare occasions, so we don't hoover up all the best stuff as someone up thread has said.

Re-sellers are a factor too but not as common as may be expected. It's not perfect, but we do provide a service to local people in our town.

When am I talking about donations which are ‘shite’ I mean damaged in some way or dirty.

"I think its quite possible that people are just skint" was the PP's post.

If people are skint, then they may want money for their cast offs and sell them on Vinted.

The logical next step I made was that they were only donating non-sellable stuff.

If people are not skint, then they may donate a range of stuff, crap and non-crap.

IN any event - people should not donate crap.

HTH.

I buy the vast majority of my clothes secondhand on Vinted, I do like to have a charity shop browse but rarely find anything these days.

When I have clothes to get rid of I do one of the following:

-List on Vinted if I think would sell for more than £5/£10
-List on my local free recycling page
-Donate to charity shop
-Use textiles recycling bin for anything that’s not in good enough condition to pass on

Unfortunately fast fashion is a problem but honestly I really don’t think the charity shops help themselves. Most shops seem to have a blanket price on items like £4.50 for tops etc including shit from shein a or faded old basic long sleeve top from primark. It’s insanity, of course no one’s buying it, I imagine if they priced things at say £1/ £1.50 per standard item/ £3 for nicer brands & priced the more premium stuff accordingly they’d sell an awful lot more. Put all the shein/ temu crap in a big bin and sell it 50p an item/ 3 for & £1 I’m sure they would be able to shift most of it & it’s better then just having it sat there for years.

I do think most things would sell if priced well.

Obviously I’m not talking about gross dirty and damaged items which is just so vile and degrading for volunteers to have to wade through but unfortunately some people are disgusting. I wonder if it would be possible for shops to implement something to ban people from making donations if they donate things that are obviously unsellable.

As irritating as that is, all the resellers I know are teenagers. They just don't have access to the plentiful, casual, part time, temporary employment we had when I was younger.

I have loads of clothes sorted out, some for the charity shop and some, I thought, for rags. I asked about the bins at the tip, but the staff told me these are not for rags either, just clothing for resale.

We do receive a letter from our local charity, telling us how much our items raised. Maybe because we are registered for tax with them? At least we know our items are being sold and raising a decent amount. (Last letter was £139.00 raised).