Goodwill uses your donations only if they feel they are good enough to sell, and dont.put them out if they dont feel it the item will sell.
I feel the same way you do about Goodwill. I have a friend who personally saw her mother's china tossed in a dumpster - still in the box she brought it in, not even looked at. They didn't set it in nicely or offer to give it back or tell her they wouldn't take it - they THREW it in so it broke. They are more expensive than other thrift stores and, while I'll still go there occasionally, I've never seen them do anything in the community.
In our town, Salvation Army runs a shelter and has a thrift store. All my clothes will go there along with anything else Habitat for Humanity won't take.
Until I faced how much junk jewelry I bought. ItIis ugly and horrible.
One person's trash is another person's treasure. I once had a rummage sale and put out a lot of my mother's really "ugly" costume jewelry at $1 per pair of earrings. They sold like HOTCAKES. I had women - young women - oohing and aahing over these awful neon-bright beaded chandelier earrings!
If you hate it give it away. Someone else will love it.
I like that show. Makes me feel good about my housekeeping.
The woman was very scared as she was getting rid of so many things. She said of the item "I may use it sometime."
We had a moment like that this weekend! In the midst of throwing out scraps of lumber there were some little 2 foot pieces of board. I asked about throwing them out and Jabber said, "They're long enough to potentially be useful." Then he stopped and we both reflected a bit on what he'd said: "potentially be useful." That's exactly WHY we're overrun with STUFF. They went in the trash. Earlier I'd pointed out these heavy duty shelving brackets we'd bought like 15+ years ago and NEVER USED. Why? Because we never put up any shelf and now I don't even remember where it was supposed to go! Our neighbor happened to see us working in the garage, came over to say hi, and we gave those to him.
Regarding clothes. How do you deal with clothes in different sizes?
What do you recommend I do with the size 8 and size 10's that don't fit now. Give myself a time limit, say 3 or 6 months? Or throw in the towel and cut the clothes loose.
Well...being my size is a world of difference from being your size. 10 lbs isn't anything close to a dress size when you're up in the 18-20-22-24 range...and I have clothes in all those sizes - some never worn because I bought them and then gained weight.
When I lost lots of weight years ago, I got rid of all my "fat clothes" and now I have very little to wear. I AM getting rid of a lot of "skinny clothes". But, I don't buy expensive clothes; I'm kind of a Wal-Mart girl. My job doesn't require suits and nice dresses...slacks and blue jeans are fine. I culled probably 10 little t-shirts I liked a lot...but they're too small and they're like $5-$10 each. I'm tired of looking at clothing I can't wear and feeling like a failure. I'll just treat myself and buy new if (WHEN) I lose enough weight to need to.
So our weekend wasn't terribly productive. I spent Saturday on my butt for the most part. I did do laundry and some cooking...but nothing much and it was a lovely day! But we never even left the house. I think we needed it. We were both just exhausted all last week.
Sunday we did church and shopping and then started making in-roads into our garage. I put a couple of XL twin box springs on Facebook Marketplace and Freecycle for free (they came with our mattress and then we got a platform bed) and a guy offered to come get those within about an hour. That's another place you can look for people who need things: Freecycle. Kid's getting apartments and stuff will post looking for free furniture and kitchen items etc. You have to be pretty firm about making them come get it...but I've given away a lot of stuff that way.
Anyway, we started by getting our tent poles, etc., put up on a high shelf out of the way, then moved on to misc. lumber scraps. We finally got walking room and then got a few things up on shelves. The guy and girl who took the box springs actually asked if we had anything else we were getting rid of. LOL We gave them our lamps that we don't use...although it just occurred to me I now have no bedside lamps for when we get the guest room complete...ah well. But we gave them our son's old microwave and my mom's 40+ year old harvest gold blender which still worked like a charm...which I do feel a little weird about. She was about a size 20, so I dragged out the bags of clothes and picked through them and gave her some stuff from there and from my closet.
Will they just sell them or throw them away? No idea. Do I care? Not a lot. It's out of my house.
I do hope they use and enjoy the blender though.
The things you hang on to.