The Sweep Smell of Success

10 GoodGymers met in Bermondsey this morning to help Crisis at Christmas. Despite asking everyone to be prompt at 10am, I was the last to arrive. I blame a slow bus and my atrocious sense of direction - sorry all!

The Bermondsey warehouse was the central logistical hub for the London centres that hosted guests over Christmas. After a busy festive period, it was looking a bit worse for wear! The warehouse needs to be handed back on 1 March so GoodGym got a last minute call-up from Taidgh at Crisis to help restore it to its pre-Christmas glory.

We were happy to welcome some new runners this morning. Jessica came for her first ever good deed - welcome! Richard and Amber were on good deed number 2 and Liv was on good deed number 3. Thanks all for responding to the last minute call!

The rest of us were slightly older hands. We all got stuck straight in to the tasks Taidgh gave us - sweeping and hoovering to start with. Taidgh asked us to do a room at a time, in case we didn't get through them all. One hour in and we had almost done the lot!

Taidgh found plenty more for us to do in our 3 hour slot. Karen, Ian and Richard got to work on some DIY, Beth and Tim did some crate maneuvering and tool tidying, Jessica and I hoovered another space and cleared up some rather mouldy crockery, while Sally and Amber stayed in the main warehouse to continue sweeping and offloading rubbish into the skip.

Taidgh was blown away by what we got done; by 2.5 hours in he had run out of tasks for us. He sent a lovely thank you email after:

Really good to meet with you this morning.

You and your team got more done than I expected and the warehouse looks good enough to hand back now.

I look forward to calling on you again in the future.

Well done everyone, it was a great example of what dedicated volunteers can get done in a short time for a good cause.