Since the pandemic, donations have surged into Goodwill thanks to people sheltering at home and purging – but every year around spring people traditionally lighten their home with Spring Cleaning. Why do it? There’s psychological benefits to a “clean slate”.
Goodwill has a couple tips to plan for success Liz Morgan shared them on River City Live.
1. Make a plan, and don’t overwhelm. Pick one room to start that will give the biggest bang for your buck. If you plan to succeed at first, you’ll continue. Whether it be a closet, garage, junk drawer.
2. Clear out as much as possible at first. Take everything out of the closet or drawers and restock ONLY with items that make you happy, fit and that you have used in the last 12 months. Use bins to sort “keep” and “donate”. You can find these at Goodwill. (prop – bins, ). Keep a donate box in the garage year round to drop things in.
3. Make it fun. Involve the whole family. Challenge everyone to find 5 items to keep, 5 items to donate within the room. Find prize a goodwill. (Prop - an old trophy from Goodwill)
4. Find another way to honor heirlooms. Inherited items can come with a lot of emotion and guilt. If these items don’t work in your home, you can honor them in another way. For example, take a gorgeous, artistic photo and frame it to keep your home. (prop – frames). You keep it and honor its memory, and that item gets new life in someone else’s home and helps others.
5. Look to Goodwill to get organizing items, like pantry boxes, small baskets and more that are inexpensive and can help organize shelves and drawers (prop- show a collection of these items and their prices, they’ll be more than half retail price)
6. Donating to Goodwill helps keep millions of pounds of items and clothing out of landfills. It’s green, eco-friendly and helps remove barriers to employment.
7. What you CAN’T donate: keep mind mind some items can’t be donated to Goodwill, those include: auto parts, batteries, chemicals, large appliances, mattresses, tires, paint.
For a complete list of what not to donate visit goodwilljax.org.