After a coffee stop, Steph, Maria, Kash and Sevan walked to their second community mission of the day at Care4Calais, where task owner Tamzin had collected lots of new stock from another C4C site, which needed to be sorted and stored. Looking into the stock room, there was nowhere to walk. The floor was full of bags, which was the huge task that team needed to solve.

There was a lot of variety in the relocated items, with the team sharing what they'd found in each:

"I've got women's large bottoms"

"A bag of bikinis?"

"This is a bag of babies. Don't open it!"

The babies were actually baby clothes and the sack they were in would contain hundreds of tiny items, so the advice from Tamzin was not to open that sack of worms today. Steph discovered a cache of handbags, there were stilettos, pillowcases and there was even a purse full of cards and cash, all 20 years out of date.

The donations either went into stock, into a charity donation group, one for rags...

"Is the washing machine on?" - Kash
"Yes" - Tamzin
"Good. If there isn't then it feels like there's an earthquake" - Kash

...or into the washing machine, if there was a chance of cleaning the clothes up for new recipients. The team wasn't working fast enough to cause an earthquake today. Must try harder next time.

Over 2 hours, the team had a huge impact in the stock room, with all of the newly received clothes cleared off the floor. Some sort of order was restored. As much as there normally was in the stock room, at least.

Today's Care4Calais session saw the 2-2 theme from the earlier Pitshanger Junior parkrun continue, with the team's skirts staying on through this session too. There was no other fancy dress on display as the start of the task was all business.

Boxes of school uniforms had arrived at C4C's West London base and the first task was to sort through them, getting rid of anything that was damaged or poor quality. Next, the clothes were organised by size. Instead of the child's age, which GoodGymers had used for previous school uniform tasks, the key today was the waist size as most donations were trousers. Some pairs were brand new, still with tags on and others had been to many lessons. Where helpful ex-owners had removed the size labels, as usual, the team needed to lay out the trousers to guess the waist size.

With the school uniforms bagged up, it was onto more colourful, less... grey clothing. First up were men's clothing donations where there were a lot of brands. Someone was clearly upgrading last season's Gucci/Lacoste/Givenchy for something new. Working through the women's clothes donations was fairly straight forward apart from some interesting sizing by the brands. A "medium" top that could fit 2 GoodGymers in it for example, well, that seemed like more of an (X)XL.

The final sizing issue that the team encountered was the size of the boxes in the storage room. Some were overflowing before the new donations even arrived. No matter how much Angela and Kash tried to squeeze in more jumpers or t-shirts, they wouldn't go. Admitting defeat, task owner Tamzin had to find the team some new overflow storage.

Today's session was all sorting and no pack creation because the ticket printer was on the blink, meaning that the tickets for new requests couldn't be created. Sevan had a look as the task wrapped up, pressed some buttons and like magic, the printer spat out a sheet of requests, ready for the afternoon's volunteering group to work through.

The latest Sunday session for Care4Calais, a charity that helps asylum seekers and refugees receive clothing appropriate for living in the UK, saw a sudden deficit of men on the task. The all-female crew, Angela, Libi, Kash, and task owner Tamzin, was capable of everything that the male GoodGymers could do, apart from one job: reliably testing the sizes of large men's clothes as trying them on would have been futile.

"The concept of being a large man is so abstract to me. How can I tell large from double extra large?" - Kash.

The community mission was the first Care4Calais session for Libi, who returned with enthusiasm for her second even GoodGym task. She joined Kash in making standard small men's packs, preparing customised parcels for hotels that received funding for clothing for refugees, and then sorting donated men's t-shirts by size - the trickiest task.

Meanwhile, Angela, already familiar with the basics of the Care4Calais system, joined Tamzin in making custom packs, carrying boxes up or down the stairs, and then helping Tamzin load the donations into the car for later distribution.

Tamzin has recently refurbished her Care4Calais hub, making more space for volunteers to work next to one another. We're looking forward to returning for the next session very soon and clearing the abundance of donations with double efficiency! We will be back for that task next week.

After task owner Tamzin's husband drove away their car at the start of today's task, it changed the list of today's jobs for the team. There were still a few new requests to prepare and most of the time would be on sorting new donations.

The incoming donations were supposed to all be women's size 10s and 12s. As well as separating the donations by size and type (top under or outer layers, plus bottoms), the team debated if some of the donations were for men or women and why men's and women's clothes had buttons on opposite sides. Apparently it was because rich women had servants to dress them, so the buttons were switched to suit the servant's dominant hand when they were face on with the buttons.

As well as sizing and categorising, the team also had to inspect the donations for damaged, dirty or inappropriate finds. They found all 3, plus men's and children's clothes in the bags, which kept them busy sorting for most of the session. The unexpected items included a leopard skin negligée and a pair of fishnets, a child's doctor's play coat and a polo shirt labelled "Jack Ryan stand in". Only the polo shirt was a necessary donation and only if they found a suitable law enforcement officer to wear it. Stranger things have happened...

Kash went to prepare the newly received requests before everyone wrapped up for a well deserved lunch.

It was task owner Tamzin's first day at home after a long holiday and it was straight back to Care4Calais work as she arrived with a car full of clothes. Team GoodGym caught up on the holiday highlights over a coffee before the first job of unloading the car and getting to work.

Kash & Steph started fulfiling requests that had come in while Tamzin had been away. They had the most difficulty finding winter coats and shoes of the right size. Most of the requests were completed, however there for 2 for women with large feet. Size 9 or 10s! According to Laycy this wasn't unusual for supermodels, but the Care4Calais stock room wasn't prepared for such sophisticated or legendary clientelle.

Nearby, Laycy and Sevan were busy building standard packs of medium clothes for men. The new boxes of stock were filled with jogging bottoms, sweatshirts and t-shirts. Their production line put together 28 packs, some with a rather Xmas-y red & green feel. They moved onto box crushing and recycling duties and eventually helped Kash and Steph complete their requests.

The team completed everything they could with the available clothes. Any requests that are still missing items could still be around when GoodGym returns next week to help Care4Calais again.

A lighter than usual task at Care4Calais today. Task owner Tamzin gave everyone an early finish as it was Xmas and also for good behaviour through the year. There was still plenty of work to do though and packages to prepare for recipients who are experiencing their first UK winter.

The legend that is Santa had delivered a big batch of padded jackets to Care4Calais. Just what was needed to keep everyone warm during the current spell of cold weather. Steph, Maria, Kash and Sevan opened half finished packages and squeezed jackets into each one. Lesser known fantasy figures then came to help the GoodGymers as Shoe Fairies delivered boxes of trainers, which is exactly what the next batch of requests needed.

Other legendary occurrences during the task included Kash exclaiming that she'd "never been so tall" as she carried a box on her head which hit the ceiling. Later, Tamzin told Steph and Sevan to "finish him off". A reference to fixing a poorly picked package for a child still needing a school bag, not a command to take them out!

Normal service will be resumed in January when we'll be back helping Care4Calais. Depending on your definition of "normal", that could be just as fantastical and amusing as today's session.