Going to the Give & Take

Saturday was finally the day of another Give & Take event in our borough.  I've talked about these events a lot over the last couple of years, because they have been the main way that I've been donating a lot of the 'stuff' that I've decluttered over the last few years.  I do send better quality items to the charity shop, but for regular run of the mill items, they mainly go to these events.

For anyone new to reading this blog, the Give & Take events are recycling events organised by our local council.  The idea is you take things you no longer need or want at 11 am, they get set out on tables etc. according to category, i.e. household, clothing, books, etc. by volunteers and then at 12 noon the event opens proper for anyone to come and take anything they want for free. It's a great concept, especially for low income families, who can't necessarily afford to buy everything they need, and for people like me with excess 'stuff' they are only to happy to give away.

As I've mentioned, I've been attending these events for a few years now, usually with a car full of stuff, but I have taken items home with me on occasion too, although not so much recently.  I decided that at this particular event, I would try to come back and look around to show you how it works.

Before I got there, here was the pile of stuff we had to put in the car.

This is about the usual amount for me lately, but hopefully not for much longer as the house is feeling much more clutter free now.

All of this stuff has been sat on the bed in the spare/sewing room for the past 3 or 4 months.  I'm was so looking forward to taking it, so that I can have the room back and get on with some sewing. As you can see from this photograph, I've got a pile of cushion inserts awaiting the making of new cushion covers.  I'm looking forward to getting on with them.

Here's how the room looks now:

Almost normal, although still a bit cluttered.  I need to really go through this room and declutter some of my crafting supplies at some point in the near future.  For now I'm just enjoying seeing it emptier though and more accessible.

Anyway, back to the Give & Take, I enrolled OH and LB's help this time and got them to come with me because it's so much easier to unload the car when there's a few of you.  This event was slightly different to normal because it was held in the park under marquees.  Here's an overall view of the event at the beginning being set up:

Here's where you leave your donations.  This marquee is where you Give & Take from.

There were other marquees at the event, where you could learn to fix broken items and mend your own clothes,

or fix your bike.

There was also a food stall encouraging less food waste, where they were making free food to give you ideas of how to use food that was nearing it's due date.

We dropped off our donations, parked the car and then went for brunch at a local café before continuing down the path through the park to the market.  After a mooch round, we came back the same way to get back to the car, so I popped back into the Give and Take tent, you can see how busy it is.  Much of the stuff had already been taken by 12.30 pm, with people pulling trolleys full of it home.

There wasn't really anything that I wanted or needed left in there, but I did come away with these books,

plus an A_Z of  Birmingham for LB (not pictured), as she's hoping to go to university there.

Normally these events take place in schools or community halls and it was the first time I've been to this one in the park, so it made a nice change.  There was plenty of footfall from people out in the park or heading to the market. In all a great event.