<p>CCers, with your far flung, varied and diverse life experience, ponder this:</p>
<pre><code>I volunteer at a food pantry. The food pantry, with very limited space reluctantly accepts some clothes, only clean clothes. There are also some toys and books. The books languish on the shelves, out of date. Toys turn over. The clothes are slim pickings and tend to pile up.
Last night a couple of volunteers were unpacking/sorting yet more clothes, in good condition but old enough to vote, maybe for Bush Sr. My protests are met with replies like,
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<p>“kids are wearing bell bottoms”, “women are wearing capris” (about narrow at the ankle jeans) and well, you get the idea. Hoarding issues. My point is it is not good use of the space, trying to find homes for clothes older than my son.</p>
<pre><code>The food pantry guests pass this stuff up. I am told, “That’s OK because we are going to be passing clothes to XWZ residential mental facility. We’re just starting that”.
What do you think? In 2011, do mental patients need this stuff?
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<p>Do mental patients need bell bottoms and capris? Why give just one answer?</p>
<p>First answer that came to mind: probably… not much fiber in mental hospital food.
Second answer that came to mind: who doesn’t need capris and bell-bottoms?
Third answer: let them die, and decrease the surplus population.
Fourth answer: what you say?!?!?
Final answer: they’re probably just happy to have pants.</p>
<p>This would be the stuff that gets sold by the bale to the third world or to fiber recyclers. </p>
<p>I picture the mental facility accepting it politely and then thowing it out. Maybe I’m wrong and this is exactly what the institutionalized are wearing, and glad to have it.</p>
<p>No, not capris, just really old jeans that taper to the ankle.</p>
<p>This is one of my quandries. I have a ton of old clothes. Yes, some of it old enough to vote. (And sadly, I still wear some clothes that are way older than my 21 year old…) Should I not be donating it? Would it do better in a landfill? </p>
<p>It sounds like Goodwill would do the sorting; clothes that might sell, clothes shipped off to other countries, clothes going to recycling. Is that true?</p>
<p>When I go through old clothes, I send the REALLY old stuff to the dump. If it’s only semi old, it goes to Goodwill or the like. My feeling, even folks who are needy should have clothing that doesn’t stand out as being old or not even close to being in style.</p>
<p>Thump, that’s how I feel about the mental patients…they deserve better.</p>
<pre><code>I’m in favor of keeping it out of the landfill. I’m in favor of telling people to bring their old clothes to thrift store donation boxes, not the food pantry. It’s not up to me.
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<p>Here’s a thought…is there any way the food pantry could color code these garments (a small dot on a care tag for example…wouldn’t show except to those looking for it. Say the first week was red…if those clothes were there for more than a month, they would be donated to Goodwill (who would make the decision what to do with them). Next week might be blue, then green, then yellow, them purple. Five weeks in the food pantry than a donation to some other place.</p>
<p>In the good old days, our local thrift shop donated clothes to an emergency room. Now, maybe this only works in a big city like New York, but the hospital loved getting them. Often it’s necessary to cut off clothing to treat something like a stabbing, gun shot wound, etc. Or the homeless walk in and bring some nasty little critters with them–bed bugs and lice.When that happened, the staff had to throw their clothes away–which would anger some of the patients. So, believe it or not, the hospital was glad to take ANYTHING. It meant patients could be released in “street clothes,” rather than hospital johnnies. The chaplain at the hospital took on the task of sorting the clothes and storing them in his office. </p>
<p>Seriously, if you were homeless would you rather leave the hospital in out of date clothing or a hospital johnnie? </p>
<p>Now, I don’t know if that’s feasible in your case, but it’s just a thought.</p>
<p>Our local community theater also accepts old clothing in good condition.</p>
<p>I was going to suggest - if it’s “old enough to vote” it might be getting to the age of being of use to a community theater’s wardrobe department. I went to see my nephew in his college production of the musical “The Wedding Singer” and recognized many of the clothes up on stage!</p>
<p>At our soup kitchen, the guests want whatever fits. And, yes, clean matters. Sure, an old LL Bean vest might go faster than plaid polyester slacks. But, style isn’t tops on their radar. It just isn’t their prime consideration. Maybe they are poorer or colder here. There is generally a rush for the tables and virtually nothing left behind. Sad.</p>
<p>If you have too much leftover, there are thrift shops where immigrants buy up decent-enough clothes to ship back to their home countries. Again, you can’t second-guess what a truly needy person would appreciate. I think it helps to put all this in perspective. Ripped, stained, etc- trash it. Something that could clothe someone, find the right venue. I like the idea of giving things a time limit.</p>
<p>I hear you expressing frustration over the inefficient program administration of your food pantry. You have observed that in your particular locale, the patrons do not want the books or clothing. Volunteers are accepting donations of junk nobody wants, resulting in precious shelf space being wasted.</p>
<p>Can you not go to the director privately, and explain your viewpoint, buttressed by your observations? Perhaps an administrative decision can be made to refuse non-food donations.</p>
<p>If not, try to take a deep breath and let go of your frustration. When you rely on volunteers, you have to accept the dim-bulb volunteers along with the bright lights. Thank you for the hours you work helping others! It makes a difference in the world, even when you don’t know it.</p>
<p>Folks, we’re not talking about vintage/hip, stuff the theater dept could use or your old shirt you still like to wear. We are talking about clean old clothes that the food pantry clients don’t even want and like Lookingforward said, they’ll take anything. Same with the books, it’s not that they don’t want books, they don’t want these books. Thorn Birds anyone? Old Time/Life books?</p>
<pre><code>Last week I determined to color code the stuff like Thumper is talking about. The idea that now this tiny overworked group is taking on funneling clothes to a mental health facility, cannot be a good thing.
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<p>if you do not want it, do not throw it out. Send to goodwill or salvation army. What they do not want gets bundled for other uses/recycling. Like the blue jeans insulation mentioned earlier. So yes, even the old out of date stuff should go to donation rather than dump!
As for the clothes that you get in, start dating the items. When they have been there for more than x months, send them packing.</p>
<p>Anyone have experience that exposes them to current residential mental health facility fashion? Are they wearing bellbottoms or tapered to the ankle women’s jeans?</p>
<p>I guess you’re ignoring my posts, but I think your initial inclination is correct.</p>
<p>Nobody wants crappy clothes that nobody wants. Yes, even kids, and poor people, and people with mental illness or developmental disabilities know undesirable clothes when they see them.</p>
<p>You will be saving precious volunteer time, and space, if you can get the book and clothing donations diverted to one of these other places everyone is suggesting before they hit your door. Why should you sort and track donations for another charity? If by some miracle some other organization wants these items, tell donors to take their stuff directly to that place. I’ve worked for public and non-profit organizations all my life; it’s easy to burn volunteers out doing pointless tasks.</p>
<p>Needs a calll to a local mental health place that specializes in the particularly needy- maybe a city or county place. They should be frank. Otherwise, I agree with using Goodwill or the like- here, we have a similar org that funnels things, as someone said, to some other re-user or the fiber recyclers, after a while. That’s what goes into, eg, the insulation under your car hood. I must have read this somewhere. Better than the landfill. Good luck. Know you’re trying to do the right thing. What certain mental health patients will wear depends entirely on their own needs and tolerances.</p>