Cool Linen and white lilac

A lone Sainsbury’s bag left out the front door to greet me this morning, this often happens; people say they have left donations outside the door, sometimes I even see them when I pass the car park on the way to work and by the time I get they’ve either all gone or down to a tiny size or maybe a single item! I personally would wait and hand them in myself.

Our shop smells lovely, I have just bought one of those plug in air-wicks and it’s lush (said in a Welsh accent like Stacey from Gavin & Stacey)  it masks any dodgy smells and..well just id prefer to smell that to be honest. I currently have Cool Linen & White Lilac.

We rely on a team of volunteers to help keep the shop running, without them I don’t know what we’d do, I’ll tell you more about our wonderful volunteers later. If you’ve never been in a charity shop before, this is how it works…. Autism Plus charity shops rely on the kindness of your donations (yes that’s also a plea, if you’ve got any good quality things you no longer use we’re always grateful for donations!! Especially at this time of year!) We don’t sell any bought in goods so we have to make the most of everything that we receive from the public – which can be a good and bad thing sometimes! So heres the life cycle of a donated bag…. we receive a bag of clothes, we sort the bag into saleable and non saleable items, those things that cant be sold because of holes, pulls etc are sent to a rag man (more about him later!) items which are fit for sale are then steamed to remove creases and freshen, hung, then ticketed and priced by me or my deputy manager. If you try to imagine around 150 items at least have to go out everyday you might begin to see the scale of items we need to keep the shop looking fresh and getting the sales in.

and that’s just the beginning!