November Autumn/Winter clean at the Oxford Mutual Aid.

This month we moved crates and racking in the lower central part of the main hall to clean that area. The ever-intrepid Ben scaled a ladder to sweep many years of accumulated cobwebs off the end window. Add to that the regular kitchen clean, fridge scrub and fresh-food check, and we made light work of our monthly 'spring' clean task.

We divided between two tasks last night, but both had the same theme - making sure people can access food whatever their personal circumstances.

5 GoodGymers helped serve and clear up at Oxford Homeless Project's evening meal.

This was Oxford Homeless Project's first community meal in over 3 years, and with a switch from Monday lunch to Wednesday evening it was hard to know whether the word would get out quickly. But it did, and the atmosphere was lovely, the food delicious and both volunteers and guests had a fun and friendly evening.

11 GoodGymers pounded the streets to deliver leaflets recruiting volunteer delivery drivers for the Oxford Mutual Aid food bank.

The rest of our lovely team set off along the streets of Cowley to deliver hundreds of leaflets for our pals at Oxford Mutual Aid Food bank. Streets were pounded, flyers delivered, and we got judgey about letter flaps again.

Lovely to have you along to GoodGym Oxford Cat.

The plan: sand and varnish the benches at one of our regular meeting locations.
The reality: Turned up to find the benches awash with water, so no sanding or varnishing happened, and instead we took our trusty litterpickers and cleaned up Marston Road and some of the surrounding residential streets.

It was always a long shot to schedule a painting task this late in the year, so fortunately we had a backup plan!

Autumn means we pivot away from our summer of gardening and nature reserve tasks and resume our monthly deep cleaning of the food bank on Cowley Road.

The day-to-day tasks at the food bank take up all the time of volunteers, so there is never time to shift shelving and give everywhere a really thorough clean. Over the last couple of years we have become efficient at working our way round the main hall of the foodbank from October to March, deep cleaning a different section each month.

Last night we started our process. Splitting our team between kitchen and main hall, we shifted and cleaned crates and shelving, swept the floors, mopped the floors, sorted through fresh produce to ditch anything going off (some VERY mouldy mushrooms!), cleaned fridges, disinfected the walls, and took out food waste. A one hour flash-mob can make light of a deep clean.

Great work team!