Recycling furniture and helping charity

A few weeks ago a flier appealing for donated furniture landed on my doormat.  It was from the housing charity Shelter who were looking for donations to sell in their local shop.  I though it was a great opportunity to have a clear-out whilst helping a charity at the same time so I organised for them to collect our old dining table and bed frame.  A few days later they came and collected our furniture and I signed the relevant paperwork and gift aid declaration form.  I then forgot about it until this morning when a letter from the charity arrived informing me that the goods I had donated had raised £100.00.  I was really pleased to hear that they had raised some money and delighted that someone would benefit from our furmiture.

It reminded me of our lean years when we had to rely on family hand me downs and charity buys.  One particular memory was of a green settee which my mum and dad no longer wanted.  It was a bit outdated but I modernised it with cushions and a throw and loved it for years until my husband spotted it during an episode of The Royal Family one Christmas.  How we laughed but secretly I was appalled that my beloved settee appeared on one of the nation's favourite television programmes.  It made me realise how dated it had become.  Fortunately my mum was getting rid of another settee (what is it with my mum and settees?) so we took that one and passed our old one to someone else.

Then there was the gate-leg table that was passed to us from my husband's parents.  It was a very well used table having circulated around much of the family but it still worked as a table as long as you covered it with a tablecloth to hide the damage inflicted by decades of use (the table had been used by three generations!).  We couldn't afford chairs so we hunted around junk shops for a suitable match and eventually found six dining chairs that I suspected came from a house clearance.  They lasted for years. 

We were also passed some bedroom furniture.  I was expecting our second child at the time and we needed to move our daughter from the box room (which was being used as a nursery) to another bedroom.  We didn't have the money to equip the room so we gladly accepted the offer of furniture.  It was far from perfect though.  The furniture (a chest of drawers and wardrobe) was a dark mahogany colour and far too heavy for a little girl's bedroom so I decided to strip it down, paint it lilac and stencil flowers around the edge.  It was a big job as I was heavily pregnant at the time but I was determined that my toddler daughter would have a lovely girly room and she did.  That lilac themed room lasted years!

These days we are not so dependent on hand me downs.  We have a bit more money and are starting to be able to buy new furniture for ourselves.  It means we can recycle our old furniture and hopefully help other people set up home in the same way that we were helped.