Living and Giving – Another way to recycle

Mary Portas has done it again. Come up with a great idea to re-generate our high streets in time of austerity and crisis for many retailers and charities. One of her “Living and Giving” charity shops has just opened up in our village of Barnes, with the proceeds going to “Save the Children”. These are no ordinary looking charity shops but designed to look like up market boutiques with attention paid to visual presentation and customer service. They are based on the concept of cooperation, with community involvement at the heart every shop. Each shop has a manager but is run by volunteers from the local community. The idea seems to work well, our little shop is a delight to visit. As well as very good condition 2nd hand clothes and books there is a selection of new garments donated by retailers and designers. Sizes are often small so I guess these are probably samples.

Below is the final option of getting rid of unwanted stuff. I did say in my last post that weather permitting I was going to go to a “car boot” sale. So a friend and I got up at the unholy hour of 5.45am, packed our cars full of “garage stuff” and headed off to the nearest sale. What an experience! We had to queue for over an hour to get in. When we finally arrived at our pitch before we could even get our boxes unpacked people were rummaging around and squabbling over the goods. Not quite up to the standard of a French Brocante but fun all the same.