This is one major reason why charity shops are unable to take donations at times - they're being used as a dumping ground for unsaleable items as well as actual saleable donations.
"Many items arriving at shops are heavily worn, damaged, stained or unsuitable for resale, creating additional handling and disposal costs for charities already under financial pressure."
This book of tests for colour-blindness turned up in a donation a few weeks ago, and I found it fascinating, but didn't think it would gain much traction trying to sell it in our shop, so we sent it on to the warehouse for inclusion on the eBay site. Good to see it listed.
Yesterday the charity shop manager could smell mildew near the storage area for incoming donations. We don't know the source, yet, as there are a lot of bags in that area, but it's likely that one of them contains something in pretty bad condition. It's probable that the bag (or bags, if we're unlucky) was stored in an attic, garage, or shed, and then just brought to us as a donation, without checking the condition of the contents. It will need to go straight in the bin when we find it - although we're prepared to clean some things, there is a point where it is not an option. The main thing will be how much has it contaminated, and therefore how much has this donation actually cost us?
On the books side, we had 323 books donated today, which split into 115 to go to the warehouse as donations, 105 for ragging, and 99 to be processed in our shop. Amongst all of this, there were a few A A Milne books that will need some research, as they are pretty early editions.
We had 117 boxes and bags of donations today, which is a lot, even though we usually get about 60 bags on an average day. It felt like people had done some clearing out over the bank holiday weekend, and were now bringing it all in. We were getting very close to being completely full, though, and had put out the signs saying we couldn't accept any more donations today, and anyone who phoned up was asked if they could possibly delay until at least tomorrow, or preferably Friday.
Only one person seemed to get snippy about it, when it was explained that we couldn't take their four bags today, and could they try tomorrow when we'd have had a chance to sort through more bags and make some space. The thing is, four bags over the phone turns out to be a whole boot load in person, and we can't take that when we're virtually full. We don't want to turn donations away, but there are times when it's impossible not to.
We had a lot of books donated in April - over 4,300! Sent about 2,000 to the warehouse as donations, 1,000 for ragging, and kept about 1,300 for processing in our shop. Thank you to everyone who donated!
We have someone who regularly donates 6 boxes of books every time he comes in. I think he has been doing this since September / October last year, and apparently he does house clearances, which explains where all the books are coming from, and what sorts of books we get from him. There are often a lot of children's books included, which seems to indicate grandparents with shelves of books for when their grandchildren visit.
Generally his donations are sorted into roughly 1/3 to us for processing, 1/3 to the warehouse as potential donations, and 1/3 to the warehouse for ragging. He's obviously just had his Gift Aid sales email from St Richard's Hospice, as he told one of my fellow volunteers that he has raised over £1,700 in Gift Aid sales. That's absolutely amazing, and very good to know from the point of view of sorting the books. He is a gold mine!
Huge amounts of book donations today - we had 24 boxes and bags of books in, which I just managed to sort through in the afternoon, resulting in 295 books to the warehouse as donations, 158 books to the warehouse for ragging and 202 books for processing - 655 books in total.
Very happy, but that was about our limit for today, and we can't really take many (or any) books tomorrow until both the delivery van has come and collected everything to go to the warehouse, and some of the remaining books have been processed.
We had a lot of maps donated on Wednesday, so I decided to sort out and tidy up the suitcase full of maps on the shop floor. All the Ordnance Survey and Michelin maps are now in numerical order, and everything else is grouped into A-Z maps and books, city maps, and Europe, UK and Rest of World maps. A nice side-effect was more people looking at the maps, and one kid bought at least 12 Ordnance Survey maps for £17.00.
This book was donated the other day, and my first thought was "What are the Daleks doing invading Venice?"
HollieK