For our final January Challenge, GoodGym Kingston went to the Hawker Centre to help clean up the pod. It's a soft play for children, or tonight for children at heart, and it has slides, obstacles courses and a sensory area. We were tasked tonight with cleaning up. Catherine, Claire, Rachel and Dave all met at the Quaker Centre to run 2.6km through the town centre and along the riverside. It was fresh but not as cold as previous weeks and it felt good to be out enjoying the early evening.

On the run we were papped by the paparazzi! Who tipped them off?! Oh, it was me, and it wasn't the paparazzi but it was Marie-Noelle striding to our destination - love a dynamic shot. We met up with Laurel there and got straight into it. We were tasked with deep cleaning the soft play floor and wiping down the sensory room. So many children come through the doors that it is hard to stay on top of cleaning sticky fingers and all the dust.

Marie-Noelle went straight to mopping and she got so on it that she even used two mops! What a legend. Catherine tackled the sweeping, David and Claire grabbed the anti-bacterial spray and went to clean the sensory room. Laurel and Rachel made it their misison to locate all the balls that had randomly located themselves throughout the soft-play - behind the soft play, on top of it and even under it - they were everywhere.

We worked hard to give it a thorough clean and after 45 minutes we gave ourselves a little reward got into the soft play course. The slides were ours! And then to the ball pit for a chill out.

Great task and lots of fun. Well done, GoodGym Kingston!

well done for litter picking in the month of January!

Rwanda has an innovative approach to keeping the streets clean. On one Saturday morning every month, shops, bars and restaurants all close, and people are only allowed to leave their homes to clear up litter. Those who don’t help can be stopped in the street by police and made to start cleaning on the spot. (Rory Stewart, The Rest is Politics)

An amazing feat of organisation happened tonight at Growbaby! Our hardy team, packed in to a small storage space in the basement of The Hub, moved contents of tightly packed shelves into smaller spaces, so they could move the shelves. The plan was to create some space, which is a tough ask when there isn't much, but there was a plan devised by Rachel and Litza, and the wheels were put in motion tonight.

We arrived from the Group Run to find that a lot of the emptying out had already happened by Litza, Nathan, Sue and Petra - which was a great start to the mission as we didn't have alot of time to play with. The shelves had to be emptied to be able to move them safely and once the corner shelf was in, Claire got down to sorting the nappies into size order and loading up that shelf. Rachel and Petra sorted the girls clothes boxes into size order. Dave and Sue sorted out the perishable items - the formula and food bank items. Jade and Marie Noelle tackled the dressing up box and carefully hung them up on a small wooden rail.

It was a tough call to get the task list done but there was no slacking and the group did a tremendous amount in a short time. We did run over the hour but we had to make sure that it was in a workable situation - so that all the exits were cleared and no trip hazards were left. Once we had completed our task we ran off into the night happy with our efforts.

On the way back we bumped into some cheeky monkeys - they joined us for a post-run stretch. All part of the Chimps Are Family exhibition in town - there's loads of statues to look out for.