A COO of Charitable Giving’s tips for donating and recycling after decluttering
I’m in my current role as the Chief Operations Officer of Charitable Giving going on almost seven years now. The duties of this job are particularly challenging because the backend process of gathering the charitable items for donation is never-ending, especially with two young associates whose daily employment and bonus structures continue to feed into the cycle. The second, confusing yet exigent component is properly identifying the recipient of our organization’s charitable donations, a process that requires diligent research and consideration.
Duties include:
- Develop schedule for assessing the need for charitable donations
- Gather, sort and assess value of charitable donations
- Research and evaluate organizations to receive charitable donations
- Coordinate charitable donation collection with internal colleagues and partner businesses
- Manage charitable donation delivery
- Manage gratuitous material not suitable for charitable donations and assess organizations best structured to recycle said material
- Apply discretion to future purchases to better mitigate the need for excessive charitable donations
Ok, now that we got the corporate job description out of the way, the only place I currently hold the Chief Operations Officer title is at home. I’ve got two kids under age eight, a husband, a cat dressed as a dog, a full-time job and a lot of stuff. Funny enough, I actually worked professionally in charitable giving for a local government organization for five years, and I adored that job. So above, I used some of those duties to professionalize my role as a mom organizing and donating the stuff our family has outgrown. Hopefully you’ll find some helpful tips in this post.
Kids, in general, just equal more stuff. Presents, school projects, spirit weeks, sports and the general speed at which they grow out of their shoes, clothes and interests make them prime stuff magnets. On my own admission, I grew up in a low-income, first generation immigrant family, which has made me the biggest stuff magnet in our house. Is it for fear of never having money again to buy things I need or want? Or fear of not finding the things I like ever again?
I’ll report back once my therapist figures it out.
A few months ago, we brought in a new big boy bed for our youngest, who wasn’t a fan of the bunk bed. We also bought a new bed and nightstands for our primary bedroom, so there was a big need to go through our things and get rid of the items we don’t use. Where I struggle with all the stuff is that it’s not all donated or recycled equally. Here’s what we did to declutter this time around, with callouts for our most common items and donations options we tried.
The recipe is pretty much the same each time. Does it fit? Does it still work? Do we use it? Will we need it in the foreseeable future? Is it something we love? If it’s No’s across the board, then it goes in the donation pile. Wash, rinse, dry and repeat.
Where We Donate
This purge we donated clothing, bedding, small furniture and toys. I’m not sure about your area, but where we live, there have been multiple times our Goodwill centers are closed for donations. Since the beginning of this year, I tried two different donation services that pick items up from your home.
The first donation pick up I tried was our local Rescue Mission. They accept a good variety of items, and all you have to do is schedule pick up and place the items outside on your pick up day. You schedule a pick up in advance, either online or over the phone, and they assign a date based on your location, which in our case was two weeks out. Additionally, any changes to your donation pick up must be handled over the phone. The pick up was smooth, and they left a donation receipt for tax purposes.
My most recent stuff cleanse went to the Vietnam Veterans of America via Pickup Please after a good friend recommended the organization. Like the Rescue Mission, the VVA picks up your donation from your home, and they accept more items than the RM, including bedding, small appliances and small furniture. They have more pick up dates available, and everything about your scheduled donation can be managed online, including edits and cancellations. This pick up was mostly smooth. There was one item they did not take, simply because the driver indicated that it was an item he had seen disposed of at the VVA frequently. Fair enough.
A Sap for the Sentimental Stuff
And that’s ok!
Whether too small, too big or broken, sometimes the stuff is important to us. Maybe it’s your favorite shirt that your kid wore, a heart-shaped purse that your aunt gifted you or a special ornament from your childhood. You have a right to keep a box of these things that are important and that you’re not quite ready to part with. The only bit I’ll advise is to make sure what you’re holding on to isn’t taking up so much space that you don’t have room for items that you need and can use right now or in the near future.
For my boys’ clothes that they’ve outgrown but I really like, I give them to family or close friends who I know will use them (and who actually want them). It always brings me joy to see my nieces wearing my boys’ superhero t-shirts or holiday pajamas.
Let’s Talk About Broken Toys
My boys are ROUGH on their toys. I sometimes wonder if the neighbor kids’ toys think we have two Sid kids like in Toy Story. It’s a point of frustration because I can’t donate the broken toys (nor do I want to), and most of them either contain electronic parts or are made of material that cannot be recycled in our blue bin. Instead, I let the guilt of improperly recycling or throwing out the broken toys consume me, and I silently hoard them in boxes as though stashing them in my office closet is somehow saving the planet.
This month I finally came across a solution – TerraCycle Toy Zero Waste Boxes. I spent time as a social media manager for a toy company that worked with TerraCycle to recycle its toys. It’s a company that’s commonly recommended for toy recycling, and their website contains solutions for common toy brands like Hasbro, SpinMaster and VTech. Additionally, TerraCycle offers zero waste boxes for many other household items.
You order one of their boxes. They send it to you. You fill it with your broken toys/toys that can’t be easily recycled, and mail it back to them. They salvage what they can to be recycled and reused and abracadabra the rest into…not a landfill?
I haven’t received my Terra Cycle Toy Zero Waste Box yet, so I can’t provide a full report. What I can tell you so far is that it is PRICEY. The smallest box was $145. I’ll update this post later once I complete the process.
Lastly, try not to feel bad about donating the kids’ toys they don’t play with anymore or clothes that don’t fit them. Sounds like a silly thing to feel guilty about, right? For me, the Mom Guilt is always hovering and waiting for any chance to pop out and shame me, like the lady in the Princess Bride pointing and shouting, “Boo!!!” Side note, this is extremely befitting for this blog post because in her tirade, she yells about bowing to the Queen of Garbage (also a decent job title in place of the one in my job description above).
May the decluttering odds be ever in your favor, and may your mom guilt be as frail as the last few squares of toilet paper left in the bathroom right when your toddler yells for help to wipe his butt.
Sincerely,
A COO of Charitable Giving
talyssa.g 