Thrify Thursday: Donate Goods

Part of being green is to make sure that you donate items that you aren't using.  There are a ton of local and national donation centers that take old clothes and other household items, as well as new items for families in need.  For many years, we have donated many items to the larger and easy to access donation sites like Salvation Army and Goodwill but we have never had a local non-profit to support.

I am excited to say that we now have a local non-profit that we can support.  I was recently contacted by Community Engagement Specialist at Northern Virginia Family Services, Colleen Ross, to see if there were any things in my couponing stash that they might want or need.  I looked at the list and gathered together some things that we aren't using and we thought would be great to donate.  It was super easy to pull everything together and I am going to drop it off at their location in Oakton which is just a few miles from our house.  If you are in the Northern VA area and interested in donating, check out their list and see if there is anything you have around the house that you aren't using and give Colleen a call to set up a time to come by and meet her.

As often goes with life, it gets too busy to do everything we planned.  I had always planned on donating any extras but never got around to finding some place that was interested in taking the things that I had to offer.  I know that I searched the Internet and found lots of different places but there were so many restrictions on items such as one place was only going to take travel sized toothpaste and the other place took full sized shampoo.  Unfortunately, after a disappointing look around, I opted that I would rather waste things that drive all over Northern Virginia and spend more money on gas then I did on the few items that one location was interested in.  I am super excited to help the Northern Virginia Family Services and hope that you find a local non-profit that you can provide support through monetary or in-kind donations.

Here are some links to get you started:

Local:
Northern Virginia Family Services
Charity Navigator

National:
Salvation Army
Goodwill
Purple Heart

When we replaced our car, we donated our old car.  So make sure you think of all of the consumer goods and see if you can donate new or used goods to make sure that other people are able to re-use the goods.  Please let us know if there are any other local non-profits that you support locally or nationally that you would like others to know and love :)