It wasn’t the greatest of starts to the new year, as the original task of helping to move furniture and restoring the hall at the Shepherd’s Bush Families Project didn’t quite go to plan. However, the GoodGym perseverance always pulls through - we couldn’t go through all the effort to get a good deed in and then fall at the final hurdle - especially with the lure of the January Challenge!

Instead, six of us thought we would do good in a different way, after spotting Celebrations wrappers on the floor, we got litter picking instead.

Abi, in true GoodGym spirit, whipped out her gloves and a bin bag before we had even made it to The Green, and got stuck in straight away, collecting chocolate wrappers and bottle tops galore. Meanwhile Lucy created a unique rubbish bag-cum-gauntlet to keep everyone’s hands clean, Kate separated out the recycling and sourced bins, while Latoya and Eloise amassed the worlds biggest collection of bottle tops (mainly Guinness, for those interested).

Harriet joined Lucy later on and filled up a bag with plastic straws, caps and Festive paraphernalia - balloons, Prosecco corks and just about every Christmas chocolate wrapper imaginable (Celebrations, Roses, Heroes, Quality Street...)!

It might have been a bit of a rubbish task, but plenty of litter was bagged up and there were good deeds tallied up for the January challenge!

What a better way to end the year than with a good deed?!

Four of us thought so (including Harriet who came along for her first ever GoodGym good deed), and arrived at St Cuthbert’s Church, before the sun had even risen for a final community mission of the year.

The church is part of the Glass Door Project, which opens up it doors to provide shelter for the homeless during the cold winter nights. Our job was to help move the tables back, however, despite arriving at 6:30, the volunteers there had already completed most of the task!

Alas, GoodGym always perseveres, so we helped out with the final table moves and found other jobs to do - wiping surfaces, moving boxes of kitchen kit back into the van, and, what GoodGym task wouldn’t be complete without a bin bag, as we took out the rubbish!

The job was completed in the flashiest of flashes, and we discussed our New Years Steve (and Chi and Harriet and Lucy) plans before leaving to enjoy our final day of 2019 (or, go back to bed, in some cases). Happy New Year!