The two Sheilas made their way to the Baby Bank for another busy morning of clothes sorting. Despite the facility not accepting clothes donations at the moment, there is still a huge backlog to be sorted and tidied away. Towards the end of the session, Clean Conscience turned up with a pallet-full of clothing returns. Instead of taking returns back from customers, an organic clothing company gives them away to charity. A real eye-opener into the workings of online companies. Great for the Baby Bank, but the items are still in their packaging and we needed to find space to store it all until it can be sorted. The boxes and packages were transported upstairs and crammed into travel cots and sacks and put into all the spare spaces that we could find. And then half an hour later another pallet-load arrived. We were exhausted!

🦸‍♀️ Six litter-picking superheroes assembled at the community centre, ready to take on the challenge of tidying up the streets and parks of Maidenhead.

Armed with picks and hoops, we set off towards the station—a gentle stroll to warm up our eyes for the litter lurking ahead. From the station, we swooped into the High Street, scooping up mountains of cigarette butts and rogue takeaway cups.

Tony and Mike veered off down a side-street, while Sheila, Sarah, Jess, and Viv took the more direct route. Everyone found a few treasures, but the general consensus? The town centre was looking far tidier than on previous missions.

We were met with cheerful “Thank you!”s from passers-by, and even roped in a spontaneous participant for a race to a paper cup. He won—and his prize? The honour of binning it himself!

With the town centre sparkling, we ventured into Kidwells Park. Here, the litter was more plentiful, and our bags filled up fast. After an hour of heroic effort, we regrouped at the community centre to compare hauls and swap stories.

A job well done—and a wonderfully chatty, cheerful task to boot!

Only one Good Gymer today, Sheila K, but two Duke of Edinburgh volunteers kept her company on today’s mammoth task. Customers who returned newly purchased clothing items to an overseas retailer would be blissfully unaware that these items did not actually go back overseas. Instead they have been gathered together and despatched in bulk to the Baby Bank. Today’s task was to open up the mountain of parcels and sort the contents into piles of underwear, tops, bottoms and swimwear. Further sorting will be needed as the Baby Bank will not be issuing out any of the more skimpy underwear to their clients!

4 GoodGymers helped out at the Baby Bank this morning. Our first task was to unpack and store 25 staircases which had been delivered that morning. Once these had all been neatly packed away, we moved upstairs. Karen and Sheila K did secondary checking and putting away of donations that had already been checked once by a corporate team. Meanwhile Carol and Sheila A were let loose in the uniform room. At this time of year we get so many requests for school uniform, so we made a start on some of the requests. We quickly had to get up to speed with the colour requirements of all the different schools (why do so many still require logo-ed items???). And questions such as, what is the chest size of an average 10-year old? Unfortunately we could not fulfil all requested items, but anything we can provide will be a great help to families who can not afford such an outlay

Four GoodGymers — Carol, Sheila, Helen, and new recruit Charlotte — lent a helping hand at the Baby Bank today. Although the bank was officially closed and not accepting public donations, quite a few still arrived, and their generous contributions were gratefully received.

With no corporate volunteers on site, it was down to the GoodGym crew to tackle the mountain of pre-sorted clothes needing a second check. Our volunteers sifted through piles of donated items, carefully sorting them into boxes ready for referrals, or into overflow bags when the boxes were full.

When we arrived, the tables were piled high — but thanks to everyone’s teamwork and determination, we left with most of them cleared. A productive and satisfying session!