HollieKRecently it feels as though everyone in the town has been having a mass clear-out of their houses and lofts, as we're getting a lot of rather dirty, cobwebby, and damaged books turning up - generally in Ikea bags. It is pretty irritating, but for some reason those donations sometimes also include the odd old book that's valuable, it's just we have to sort through a lot of rubbish to find the one good book.
Yesterday someone tried to donate a cycling helmet, and got very annoyed that we wouldn't take it. We don't sell cycling helmets as we can't guarantee that they are safe, so if we'd accepted it, it would have gone straight in the bin. Apparently she managed to palm it off on another customer!
Last week someone donated a pink trolley with three baskets, which we've all got very excited about and immediately put it to use for moving books around. Yes, we think it's the best thing since sliced bread, because carrying armfuls of books around gets very heavy. No, we're not giving it up to anyone who suggests it could be used for displaying items on the shop floor - it's ours!
One of the more dispiriting aspects aspects of charity shop life is coming across a pile of donations left outside the shop, because its usually a load of dirty and broken junk that just ends up in the bin.
Not everything that is donated is meant to be donated. Yesterday a lady phoned up in a panic to say that her husband had inadvertently dropped off her dry cleaning as well as the bags of donations. We all started searching, and it was looking pretty hopeless, as no one could spot a jute bag full of clothes anywhere in the stockroom, or in the downstairs storage area. Eventually we did find it, just not in a jute bag. Very relieved!
Preparing donated books for sale involves a lot of cleaning, probably more than I would have guessed before I started volunteering. Generally this amounts to removing stickers (and sticker residue) and wiping off a light layer of dust. Then there are the cookery books with added ingredients on the cover, gardening and natural history books with streaks of dirt, and transport books with spots of grease. Coffee stains and cobwebs are not often an issue, but heavy layers of dirt, sticky patches, paint, and other suspicious stuff are usually too much to deal with.
As Book Volunteers, we sort, clean, categorise, and price books to prepare them for sale. Some books are too dirty, torn, creased, or stained to be saleable, and these get sent for ragging, but in general we are able to clean and repair most books. We research any books that look as though they could be valuable, and although we won't get as much for them as a second-hand bookshop or antique shop would, we have a fair amount of success in sales of "Old and Interesting" books. Books get put on sale for at least six weeks before being culled and sent on to the warehouse for redistribution to other shops.
Friday's odd donation was a pair of Lederhosen - example shown below. We didn't think that there'd be a lot of interest in them, apart from people pointing and laughing, so sent them on to the warehouse. They can either send them to another shop or put them on eBay.
We are very aware that we're the most expensive charity shop in town, so we aim to reflect that in the quality of the items on sale.
We do spend time researching items in order to price them accurately - some things are unexpectedly valuable, whilst others are worth less than we would have imagined. It is often amazing what people donate.