How can we live without it?

For a few years now I've toyed with the idea of having a clothing exchange with the women at church.  I've mentioned it to numerous young women when was was YW President, I mentioned it to Relief Society President, after Relief Society President hoping that someone would take charge, think it was a great idea and put it into action.  Well that did not happen and I realized that if I wanted this to happen I was going to have to make it happen myself.  So I started last winter e-mailing my friends and asking if anyone would be interested in participating in a clothing exchange in the summer before school started.  I thought I'd feel out my audience before I took the plunge and planned it, no sense in planning it if nobody was interested.  Let me tell you the response was great.  Everyone I asked thought it was a grand idea and were all on board with helping out.

First I sent fliers to all my friends with a date and time and drop of locale.  I was going to have it at my house because I didn't expect a huge response.  As time got closer, and I kept getting more and more response I realized that this was bigger than 1/2 my garage could hold and I needed a larger venue.  So off to the Relief Society to ask if we could make it a bi-ward activity.  Of course you can, all you have to do is mention the word "FREE" to Mormon women and you are in!  I quickly changed the flier to include the church address and a drop off time there Friday night and it quickly spread like wildfire.

Friday night I bought 6 pizzas and some chocolate and those ladies were knocking down my door to help!  We sorted and folded, and oohhh'd and aaaahhhh'd over all the baby clothes, for 3 hours until the last soccer cleat was sorted.  After we were finished I looked over our handy work and was in awe at the amount of "stuff" we had collected.  It was enormous!!!!!!!!!!!!

I took the pictures from my friends camera phone so they don't do it justice.  We had 12 long tables piled with clothes, several tables with miscellaneous items, the whole stage was piled with shoes, 2 tables stacked with books, and rows and rows of toys.

Today I expected people to be loading up their vans with the free stuff to take home, and I was wrong.  We did get a good response and lots of people took things too, but most of us were so excited to have purged our closets that we were reluctant to take anything home.  I put a sign out in front of the church and we had several passersby come in and take a ton of things.  I do however think we didn't get rid of 1/2 of it.  We had 5 van loads to take to the thrift store afterward.

All in all it was a huge success and I learned a lot about what to expect and do next time.  And YES there will be a next time:

Don't bring the children.  I already have enough crap in my house without them taking home everyone else's!

Make sure to have a working air conditioner in the van before loading all the kids and stuff in.

Do it at a time when your husband is not a cripple!  (love you honey)

You must specifically ask the Brethren for help taking down, they don't volunteer their efforts, at least not many of them.

Bring extra trash sacks (thanks Joy, you saved us)

Be even more specific in your e-mails and fliers, you'd be surprised how many people were really confused about this whole process.

So next year is sure to be bigger and better.  Thanks to everyone who came and helped out, I could not have pulled it off without you.