You are ready to begin the new year. For the very first time you have all of the holiday decorations back downstairs and put away before the tenth of January. In addition, two unexpected snow days right when the kids should have been returning to school gave the whole family a chance to sort through their closets, drawers, and rooms and get rid of the clothes and other items that they were no longer using.
What is usually a stressful and time consuming process, was much easier than anyone would have expected. In the past, you would have gone through everyone’s closets once they headed to school. Then the following weekend the negotiations about what the kids want to keep and what they want to give away would begin. It likely went better this year because the kids are a little older, but the extra days at home that allowed them to sort through and discard their own belongings made everything easier. The tubs of gently used clothing and other household items have been picked up by military charities and it really does still like a fresh start to the new year.
Your family especially likes to donate to military charities because your father and three of your uncles were in the service. Even though your military family members are doing well now, they understand the struggle of holding it together for yourself and your family when the nightmare of returning home from service can become overwhelming. Even the fact that many of the charity clothing pickup is done by retired veterans is comforting. Knowing that those drivers are part of an industry that provides jobs for the same people they help is rewarding in itself.
Organizations that accept clothing donations do more than provide the valuable service of distributing clothing and helping families in need. They also provide an easy way to keep clothing and other textiles out of landfills that are already too crowded. Unfortunatley, nearly 12 million tons of clothing and other types of textile waste is discarded in America every year. Without thinking, many Americans throw away clothing that could either be reused or, at the very least, be recycled. Military charities that offer to pick up unwanted or rarely used items prevent unnecessary waste.
Although pick up services provide easy access to donation centers, Americans still discarded an estimated 90% of clothing and textiles that could have been recycled in the the year 2012 alone. What are you doing to help the 10% of veterans who are currently unemployed? Donating your clothing to charitable organizations that serve veterans and their families provides clothing and other household items to those deserving people, while also providing jobs and keeping unnecessary items out of already crowded landfills.