Shop Charity in '23!

Cherryfudge

florianatwobob said:

If only that chair was as old as it looked @Cherryfudge! It could’ve made an excellent ‘boudoir chair’ with some love and reupholstery but, on investigation, it had a plastic frame! 

On one level, that's hilarious! It might make a stage prop, I suppose. On the other hand, just having read @Rosa_Damascena's article, it's another sad result of our culture's surfeit of stuff.

Interesting that the article assumes everyone's been guilty of dumping things at charity shops. It brought to mind something I read about how we tend to value our own things more highly than others do. Personally, I suspect I continue to see something as it was when I bought it, rather than how it looks once it's been used/stored. Other people might interpret it more realistically.

Watty1

I think the surfeit of stuff is very true. I also suspect many are guilty of trying to sell then just passing on when it does not go.

florianatwobob

If it had been wood I’d have had it away quick smart! 😉 In the meantime I’ll just have to keep using the old pub chairs I wombled from my local pub (with their blessing). I’m sure someone will pick that chair up (and we have a couple of thriving am-dram groups as well as a small professional theatre). 

flamingo747

I think the huge problem is Consumption.  We buy (and gift) ridiculous amounts of stuff. There is this social pressure to own and consume that really took off once factories started. Our global economy is built on producing more and more despite the harm at the raw product stage, producing, transporting and dumping. 

There was an interesting BBC podcast on the end-of-life of fast fashion, and the colossal harm it does to African communities it's dumped in. 

When you think of the cost of charities having to process, then the transportation/environmental costs to get it to poor nations, it actually seems more ethical to landfill it in the UK than it ending up in landfill there. It's certainly making me think about what I have in my charity shop pile!

I guess it's why REDUCE is the first one in reduce, reuse, recycle ♻️ 

Cherryfudge

Wow, really well put, @flamingo747. Guilty as charged: I gift too much although I'm trying to be more thoughtful about what I gift. 

flamingo747

Aww thanks 😊 

I think about it often when the news is full of "we must grow the economy!". I can't see how we do that without making more stuff, and buying more stuff, and throwing more stuff. Most people live in a level of comfort that our ancestors (and people is less privileged societies) could only have dreamt of, yet the social and cultural pressures tell us we don't have enough and don't do enough. It's really quite sad. 

Brie

I think that a lot of us are conscious that if we buy something we should get rid of something as well to make room.  it's one of the reasons I believe that so many of us drop off our bag of tat valuable items as a charity shop and then take the time to look and see if there's anything we want to buy.  I know that as well, and I think I may have mentioned it before, if I'm doing some clearing out there's usually the stuff that might be valuable to someone else and then there's the dire stuff that needs to go directly to the dump.  When doing a double run like that once I've dropped off at the chazza I have often asked if they need anything taken to the tip.  Usually there's a bag of something grotty or a broken whatever that will fit in the car.  Alternatively if I know there's going to be room in the bin at home then I can take some stuff back there. 

The problem for so many of these places is that they get charged by the local authority for using the tip.  Some LAs will give them a free pass - our local furniture bank is allowed to drop things at the tip a total of 6 times a quarter and get charged for any more times than that.  Hence a call out to those of us working in related services to see if we could go to the tip for them as a private car wouldn't get charged.  

flamingo747

That's a great idea Brie

Potternerd

Last purchases of the year: pale teal faux fur Miss Selfridge coat £6. More blue than it looks in the photo and goes well with a pale teal pashmina type scarf I’ve had for a while.
Black leather Rowallan cross body bag £12
Nivea body moisturiser 75p.

2 coats and 4 bags to donate to appease the charity gods.

i hope that the stuff I donate is good quality. I sometimes do a separate ragging bag. Also tend to check if it is something a bit unusual like DS,s old cricket bats recently.

Paspatur

Not charity shops but I found this report fascinating, we seem to be filling the world up with cheap plastic clothes
https://changingmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Take-Back-Trickery-Compressed.pdf