Someone a little nicer

When the shirt off my back is not enough – unless it’s Versace June 10, 2009

Aah, I wonder how many people in locked rooms it took to get permission to make Mary Queen of Charity Shops - in which the funny but fearsome Mary Portas attempts a makeover of the cuckoos in our high street: charity shops. Well done Save the Children for signing up despite the certainty that pushy Mary and her even pushier producers would speedily alienate a) the volunteers and b) the customers – leaving no-one to buy or sell.

Beckham misses the target

The programme makes the volunteers look as fusty and past-it as copies of  David Beckham’s autobiography growing dog-eared on the shelves of every charity shop I’ve ever been in.

Yet who’d want to do their job? One of the things I learned watching the programme is that giving your time as a charity shop volunteer means sifting out  the odd saleable item from a mound of  soiled underwear and shirts with yellow stains under the arms. These folk deserve medals not Mary’s meddling.

I want you to know I have never, ever bundled my underwear in with the other stuff designated for the charity shop. But nor have I ever donated anything I thought I had a half-chance of selling. Not so much because I wanted the money, or the joy of haggling with a determined car boot buyer over whether my high-end high street trousers are worth 50p or £1. But because buried somewhere in my own particular fusty corner is the thought some things are too good for the charity shop.

Natty

Shame on me!  For isn’t the truth that donating something worth having to a charity shop is doubling up on niceness: helping raise money for a cause I believe in and at the same time raising the spirits of whoever discovers my natty tailored trousers in amongst the Florence and Freds and elasticated waistbands?

For the last three weeks I’ve been tripping over just such a pile of costly clothing mistakes that were ‘too good to give away’. As I tripped and hit my nose on the mirror this morning I made up my mind: to be a Mary disciple and ferry the whole lot down to the Oxfam shop. Even the Monsoon wine-coloured Angora cardigan which feels like silk but is so fine its fibres make my eyes sore. And the  Next  trouser suit. I admit it was the purple lining that swayed me into buying it but my head said serious people need a suit sometimes. Since when, despite interviews, meetings and appointments, the suit’s stayed in its plastic wrap: I guess I’m not as serious as I thought.

The volunteer in Oxfam wanted to talk about the programme. “It’s all very well for her, but people just won’t pay. Something might be worth £900 but who’s going to come in here and spend £200 on it?”

What’s in a name?

Still, the programme may have tweaked a few consciences as well as my own. The old favourites were still there: bobbled jumpers, fuschia track suits and faded duvet covers. But in amongst them I spotted a lovely cream jacket from Zara, a glorious evening dresse from Whistles plus shirts from Minuet and Kaliko.

Not in the Jimmy Choo league, I grant you, but more likely to find a buyer than secondhand underwear.

Unless the charity shop volunteers have spared us that particular insight into what they’re customers are looking for.

Would you give your unwanted  Gucci to a charity shop? What’s been the hardest thing to handover? And does it count as kindness when your main motive is to free up space in your wardrobe – nature abhors a vacuum!

Links

Great blog from self-confessed charity shop addict  on where to go and what to look for.