Volunteering

For a while now, N and I have felt that we should try to put some of our time to better use.  Not that we felt we were wasting time, more that we realised that perhaps we could be of some use elsewhere.  On a visit to the furniture store for our local island hospice, we saw a notice asking for volunteers and decided that this might be the answer - we could make a contribution to our community and use our time in a specific and purposeful way.  We had a call last week to ask us to come along for a trial shift this morning.

The donation and distribution centre is next-door to the furniture store and is a sight to behold!  It is huge, crammed to the rafters with goods.  Here all the donations collected at the various charity shops are brought, sorted and then packed up to be distributed back out again.  On first glance it looks like complete chaos, but there is definite order to what goes on there.  N and I were assigned to the bric-a-brac desk, and our job was to unpack each bag that had been donated, sort through and distribute the contents to the appropriate areas of the centre for further sorting and packing.  Clothes and bedding went to one area, where a group of ladies carefully sorted through each item; china and glass went somewhere else; books, CDs and DVDs to another area.  It was a real eye-opener to see charity shop donations from the 'other side', so to speak.  It seemed that some people used charity bags as a means of getting rid of junk.  Clothing ranged from top branded items still with the shop price tag on through to dirty washing!  Ugh!  When I send clothing to the charity shop I make sure it is all freshly washed and ironed.  We also became aware of safey rules and regulations regarding toys.  It was surprising just how much stuff has to be thrown out because it is not fit or suitable to be sold in the shops.  

Our 3-hour shift went very quickly - as quickly as we were taking black bags from the incoming area and sorting them, more bags were being stacked in their place!  However, we actually really enjoyed getting stuck in and doing something worthwhile.  The other volunteers were very helpful and pointed us in the right direction with our many questions, usually "what do we do with this?"   We're back again on Monday.

We went back to see the house for a second viewing, this time with a builder friend to give us some advice and guidance.  We are doing lots of calculations.  Neither of us wants to make any assumptions - house-buying is inevitably fraught with problems.  One step at a time.

We have had torrential hail-storms several times today; goodness knows where all the rain is coming from, there seems to be no end to it.  And no photos for a few days as there's only so many rainy-days pictures I can take!