On a fresh but sunny Saturday morning, 9 GoodGym'ers met up at St Mungo's Reconnection Post to help sort and tidy clothing donations. Some had either run or volunteered at a local parkrun beforehand, while others had run and walked various distances from their homes post-breakfast!

Amongst many H&F regulars, it was really lovely to welcome the ever-smiley Camilla along for her first GoodGym experience and good deed! Hope you had fun!

The sort shift

Despite the slight confusion when the team arrived at St Mungo's Reconnection Post, one of the Reconnection Workers, Lucasz, sorted out all the bags, labels and pens needed for the task at hand. St Mungo's Reconnection Post provide valuable services to vulnerable and homeless adults with complex needs in the community, such as the 'No Second Night Out' service where new rough sleepers are identified on the streets of London and are offered a bed; they also attempt to reconnect people with their family and support networks so that they do not have to sleep out for a second night for the night - sadly, with the number of rough sleepers on the rise, this is a very valuable service.

We had visited St Mungo's Reconnection Post on a couple of group runs back in January and had made great inroads into organising the room FULL of donations, all that was needed was one final push to tidy up the labelling and clothing on the shelves...well that's what we thought anyway! When the door to the room opened again it was quickly apparent that the room had once again been filled to bursting with donations - these ranged from bags to bedding, and everything inbetween!

This is how we two do it

So as to maximise the space and efficiency, the team quickly divided up into two groups, one in the room and one in the corridoor. 'Team room' quickly set about transfering the masses of unsorted bags out of the room into the corridoor so that 'team corridoor' could begin the big sort! With everyone working together like a well-oiled machine it wasn't long before there were lots of nicely sorted, folded and stacked piles of various men's and women's clothing attire. Team room worked quickly to put the many pairs of shoes and socks scattered around the room away in the cupboard space so as to clear an area with which to work in.

You're taking the biscuit!

Amongst the polite calls of "men's shirt", "women's jumper" and "more labels please" there was also the discovery of some rather interesting objects that were definitely not 'donation material', these included: bourbon biscuits (sadly crushed, as were Johnny upon hearing this!), an empty cider bottle, copious amounts of empty lighters, cystitis treatments, and Bex's second favourite item*, the dead cockroach!

Bags of fun

With many bags now sorted, filled, labelled and lined up in the corridoor, the room was now much noticeably clearer, but not cleaner due to a dearth of biscuit crumbs and rubbish. Thankfully an upright dustban and brush was located and Jason proved a dab hand at providing a quick clean sweep of the room. With the room swept, all that was left to do was for the team to work in trusty human chain formation and get the nicely sorted and labelled bags of donations back into the room, ensuring space was left around them so that people could actually move in the room and easily locate donations - mission accomplished!

On a brewtiful morning we didn't want to get shot of each other

The team posed for a nice group photo in the sunny courtyard area before either heading home or through Shepherd's Bush market in search of caffeine! Awesome work team, hope you have a great rest of your weekend.

*Bex's favourite item was obviously the baseball cap...