How To Spring Clean Your Home For Charity Donations

Hi Hadley Court Readers! This is Lynda Quintero-Davids, guest posting today about how to clear clutter from your home and where to donate your gently used items – from a closet clothing cleanse to those household goods. Sometimes, clearing clutter out of a home can be overwhelming. Most people tend to get emotional about the process, possessions and objects – linking a memory to them, and making it difficult to let them go. But once you take the emotion out of it, a closet cleanse and a household purge { spring cleaning!} can be quite liberating and also help families who may be struggling right now. A favorable way to take the emotion out clearing home clutter is to change your perspective: think of others and donate.

Spring and Fall are usually the two times a year people re-evaluate their home and their belongings. Think of it as a six month rotation and refresh. Spring is a wonderful time to renew, both personally with new outfits and in our homes with renewed surroundings, therefore, an excellent place to start are the closets. Don’t get overwhelmed – just take it one closet at a time.

 

Donation Tip: Organize a group donation at your place of employment of career-type clothing articles to give to to an organization such as Dress for Success.

 Dress For Success Shop – Phoenix location, just 1 of over 130 worldwide affiliates.

 

Closet Cleanse and Donating

Lifestyle changes can cause a shift in the way we dress. Lifestyle changes can range from moving to a new climate or location to leaving the corporate world and becoming an entrepreneur or CEO Mom. When doing a closet cleanse, take the time to actually try on shoes, jeans, pants, skirts and tops. Besides keeping in mind ‘if you haven’t worn this in six months to a year, let it go’, also keep in mind how your clothes can change the life of someone less fortunate than you. An excellent non-profit organization to help with donations is Dress for Success.

Dress For Success {and I quote from their site} is an international not-for-profit organization offering services designed to help clients find jobs and remain employed. Each Dress for Success client receives one suit when she has a job interview and can return for a second suit or separates when she finds work. Founded in New York City in 1997 by Nancy Lublin with just three locations, Dress For Success has grown to nearly 130 affiliates in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg and the West Indies. Dress For Success relies on the financial contributions, in-kind donations and volunteer efforts of individuals and companies around the world who are committed to helping women take charge of their lives.

Any gift that you can make to Dress for Success whether it is your time, clothing or a  financial donation will make a substantial and lasting difference in a woman’s life. Have you had a career change and you’re looking to purge suits you acquired and no longer wear? Why not participate in the DFS SOS (Send One Suit)?

Each year, Dress for Success issues an SOS to women across the country, asking them to donate their nearly-new suits in order to help deserving women enter the workforce and take charge of their lives.  Every year, thousands of women respond and become part of our S.O.S. – Send One Suit – Weekend, which is happening in Houston now, along with select location “Boutique” sales (open to the public) and their “Wardrobe of Women” – WOW event -their 9th Annual Spring Fling happening on March 29th in Houston,too. To find out more about this event and many others, visit Dress for Success’ Upcoming Events page here, and for your specific location and events, click on “locations” in the right hand column of the site at DressForSuccess.org

Dress For Success worldwide meets the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance’s Standards for charity accountability. All donations to Dress for Success are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Visit the Support Dress for Success page to learn how you can get involved with Dress for Success, and see their locations page for a location near you, including the seven locations for Hadley Court readers who live in Texas. 

While performing your closet cleanse, of what to donate and trash, you may also be wondering what to keep. Matchbook Magazine provided an excellent and helpful checklist for you to refer to called 50 Classics for your Closet:

 

 

Clothing Donation Organization Options

Besides donating clothing to organizations like Dress for Success, there are other organizations to donate to. Doing a closet cleanse can include not only clothing from your own wardrobe, but also your spouse and children. Tie styles change, and kids grow out of clothes – Some organizations to donate their clothes to are: Goodwill, Salvation Army, Boys and Girls Club of America and your local church thrift stores. When donating clothing to organizations such as Goodwill or Salvation Army, you’re helping to not only give an affordable means of shopping for clothing to those on a small budget, but your donations also help put people to work. These organizations not only take donations of clothing from women, men, and kids, but they take household goods as well.

 

 

Donating Household Goods

After you’ve done your closet cleanse, it’s time to take a look around your home. With the same thought process of taking the emotion out of the item, rethink your possessions. Maybe you’ve inherited a few furniture items that really don’t fit your lifestyle, or perhaps you’re looking for a change – a chance to refresh a space. Maybe you’ve wanted to switch from a wooden coffee table to metal and glass, or your living room needs a concealed storage side table, and you’re looking to let go of a matching set en lieu of a more eclectic vibe. Two exceptional non-profit organizations to donate household items to are Housing Works and Dwell With Dignity. Both are helping the fight against homelessness, one household at a time, and your donations can help.

 

Dwell with Dignity

Dwell With Dignity is the Dallas based non-profit organization recently featured here on Hadley Court (you can read and click here: Meet Dallas’ Dwell with Dignity – A Non-Profit Organization Inspiring Lives With Design). DwD’s mission is to help families escape poverty and homelessness through design, one household at a time – and just as Dress for Success started small, Dwell is branching out to new cities, completing their first satellite home project in Atlanta which they revealed during the Design Bloggers conference in Atlanta this past weekend that Leslie attended. Here’s a peek at what the team of Atlanta designers and volunteers were able to accomplish, for the first home project by DwD, outside its base of Dallas…

 

 

 

Along with accepting designer donations, gently used items make up the majority of the inventory Dwell with Dignity uses to transform the apartments for families. While DwD is appreciative of all donations, below is a list of what is needed and what Dwell with Dignity can take:

 

For those of you in the New York city area, another non-profit organization is Housing Works. What is Housing Works? Housing Works is a non-profit organization committed to ending the twin crises of AIDS and homelessness. Housing Works believes that all people have the right to a rich and empowering life. Housing Works raises money through donated goods at their 12 Housing Works Thrift shops locations in NYC/Brooklyn. Housing Works Thrift sells vintage and contemporary goods to fashionable bargain hunters. 100% of their proceeds fund their fight to end AIDS and homelessness (see Proceeds). Housing Works began in 1990 and Housing Works Thrift launched in 1992. 

 

 

 

Each year, for the past ten years, Housing Works holds a charity event to increase their awareness and raise funds through donations + an auction called The Design On A Dime Benefit. Since 2005, the Housing Works Design on a Dime Benefit has raised more than $2 million in support of Housing Works. The next Housing Works Design On A Dime Benefit will be coming up on April 24 – 26. Here’s a peek at two of last years creatively styled vignettes…

 

 

For additional information about Housing Works, how to volunteer, what to donate, how they are helping the community as well as several other community events, please visit their site at www.housingworks.org

 

So you see, from a closet cleanse to a household purge, looking at your items with a new perspective can help so many others with their surrounding and give hope to their outlook on life. With Spring just around the corner, March is the perfect time to get your house in order, start the season renewed, and help give back along the way.

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Lynda Quintero Davids

for

Hadley Court

Thank you for reading Hadley Court, I hope you’ve enjoyed my guest post today and if you’ve done some spring cleaning and organizing and have donated your items to charity, please share your donation story with Leslie’s readers in the comments and, if you know of a charity that needs items, in your area, please share a link to that charity in the comments, too, for Hadley Court readers to see.

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Thank you!