Cleaning up so I can get help this weekend

 

partial view of my mountain of used clothing

This is Mount Clothesmore taken today.  This is just the side picture of my clothing mountain.  Charlie has had to build a temporary restraining  wall around it so we can maintain a walkway.  To make matters worse we are still taking in almost 2000 pounds more each week.

January and February are very cold months and gym is always freezing even with three heaters going full blast in the the clothing tent.  This Friday we are expecting a group of Pioneer Girls from Silver Springs Maryland to help put a sizable dent into the many laundry carts pile as high as we can get them.  The clothing in the tent is already pre-sorted and just in need of rolling them and packing and taping them.  We are hoping for about 100 boxes to be done over the weekend from this very remarkable group of teens.  In addition to the sorted clothing we also have 900 pounds of hospital linens to be boxed as well as shoes and a smaller hill of linens.

The hard part is getting everything sorted so they can come in and start immediately.  People will forgive you for many things but not for wasting their time.  We like all our groups to have projects that have a beginning, a middle and an end.  We like to have our volunteers feel like they have accomplished a task.

Orientation involves wearing some of unusual fashion accessories!

This is lovely Lydia who helped me this morning sorting even more clothing for the weekend group.  I loved her enthusiasm an many questions.  The clothing behind her have all been sorted for the this coming weekend.  She had some very good ideas about some of our discarded clothing and even volunteered to take them to a rag distribution center.  I love it when a plan comes together. Feel free to come help us box and sort.