How to Remember to Donate Your Gently Used Items

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Donating clothing to charity

When you are getting rid of stuff from around the house that you don’t need, it’s obvious that you don’t just want to toss out boxes full of perfectly usable items but what about the one item? After you’re done with your main spring or fall cleaning and held a yard sale or gave them as charitable donations, there will still be things around the house that you find as you go that you don’t want. For example, you could be washing dishes and start cleaning your husband’s travel coffee cup when he tells you that that cup is the wrong size for his briefcase. He’ll need a new one, but what to do about the old one? Or maybe you are going through your closet, looking for something to wear and you put on a shirt only to realize it’s really not your color. So, what do you do? Do you really go all the way to a donation center or use a donation pickup service to give them just one item? It seems like a waste of time. However, what about the cup and the shirt? Plus that book that you just finished that you likely won’t read again. Or the shoes that are too painful now.

You could take just one shirt as charitable clothing donations, or one cup or whatever the case may be,but if you are a busy person, it may take too much time out of your day for one single item. But, don’t throw it in the trash. Here’s what you could do:

Re-purpose a decent sized box to make it less of an eyesore and stick in the corner of a room or in a closet, if you have the space. This is your donations box. As you come across the random clothes, shoes and household items that are still in good condition but you don’t need anymore, put them in there. Once the box gets full, take it to a charitable clothing donations center. Remember, to bring the box back home to start the process again. It’s a great way to make sure that you don’t keep cluttering up your home.

You want to make sure that you get a pretty good quality box since you are going to be using it over and over. Here are some great ideas for keeping your donations box looking good.

  1. Wooden boxes are the prettiest, but they can get heavy to carry. If you opt for wood, then you probably will want to take the items out and bag them before taking them to a charitable clothing donations center instead of carrying the whole box. If you have a wooden box, you can either leave it as it is in order to get that natural wood look, you can stain it whatever color stain you like or you can even paint wood if you would prefer.

  2. Having a tote is a good idea. You could put the lid on and cover it with a table cloth and even make it functional. For example, use it as a side table or a coffee table, depending on how big your box is. There are tote boxes that have wheels for easy transport. This means, when it’s time to take your items to a donations center, you can take off the table cloth, wheel it out to your car and head over to the drop off center without a fuss.

  3. If you decide to go with cardboard boxes, you’ll have to remember that those tend to get flimsy after awhile and fall apart so they’ll need replacing more often than other types of materials. To cover a cardboard box, you could use wrapping paper, fabric or really anything that you want. Once the box is on it’s last legs, you could leave the entire box when you drop off at the charitable clothing donations center and start again from scratch.

Making sure that you donate is the most important part. There’s no reason for an extra box to be sitting around if you are going to forget that you should be putting stuff in it to donate. You are doing a great thing, probably more than you realize, when you donate.