A final (for this season) evening at Oxford Mutual Aid food bank doing our flash mob cleaning.

Since the autumn we've worked our way around every inch of the food bank cleaning areas which rarely get any attention. We've moved stock, crates, and shelving. Swept, bleached, mopped, and then figured out the giant tetris of how to put it all back. We've cleaned the kitchen monthly, including taking out kilos of food waste and scrubbing the fridges, walls and floors. We've restacked storage, loaded deliveries, packed Christmas gifts, and cleaned dozens of delivery crates (prising them apart when necessary!).

It's taken 5 months, but WE DID IT!

Despite being one week late with our International Women's Day tribute (thanks to snow storms) we were not feeling at all blue about our Wednesday evening plans.

Armed with a googlemap of all the women's blue plaques in Oxford, plus litter pickers and bags, we divided up into walkers and runners and set off to explore some of Oxford's female luminaries while litter picking along our route.

Interested in plotting your own exploration of the blue plaques dedicated to women in Oxford? Find them mapped out here.

Donning buoyancy aids and a can(oe)-do attitude, a group of GoodGymmers teamed up with Falcon Boat Club to undertake a river litter pick along the Cherwell and Thames as part of OxClean's 2023 Spring Clean.

A dedicated quartet of GoodGymers did a thorough tidy up of the South Oxford Family Room garden - lopped brambles, swept leaves, tidied toys, dismantled an overgrown arbour, and barrowed in a tonne and a half (at least it felt that much!) of woodchip to lay paths and de-mud the ground around the mud kitchen.

We were grateful for the tea, coffee and snacks provided, and relieved that the loud boom we heard was a sonic boom from a military aircraft and not the end of the world.

Over the last several autumns we have planted lots of daffodil bulbs around the streets of Marston. St David's Day seemed like a great time to go and check out how they're getting on and litter pick while we're at it. The cold, dry winter meant that not many flowers were in bloom yet, but we could see that there's been a good success rate in them coming up and budding, even in areas where we weren't convinced they'd be able to survive, so flowers will only be a week or so away.

Food items were definitely the theme of this litter pick - we could have made ourselves a 3 course meal of fortune cookie, discarded burger and half a chocolate bar plus half a rich tea biscuit to finish. Maybe not exactly recommended! Lots of cigarette and vape packets too. Overall not one of the grubbier litter picks we've done, but 4 sacks of grot collected, and some definite sogns of spring coming.

Our February food bank flash mob tackled the cleaning of the Eastern and Northern sides of the hall. As always, lots of crates full of stock needed to be unstacked and moved elsewhere in the space so that the floors and walls could be unveiled for cleaning. Duly relocated, the areas were swept and mopped, then the fun of trying to restack piles of crates in the same configuration as they came out began. Thanks to 'before' photos we were largely successful this time! The Northern end of the hall proved to be the grottiest spot, with lots of dust, spilt items and general muck to clean up.

While the majority of the GoodGymers toiled away on the moving-cleaning-restacking in the main hall, a breakaway crew sorted fresh produce in the kitchen, swept and cleaned the floors and walls, took out food waste, cleaned the fridges, and left the whole place gleaming.

Last but definitely not least, Anja and Steve cleaned dozens of food crates and stacked them back in the regular piles for reuse.

The amount 19 GoodGymers can achieve in an hour is truly impressive!