40 Bags - an Lenten update

There are only two weeks left of Lent, and while I had been making headway in some areas (meatless days, prayer), I was struggling with the 40 bag challenge. I started out strong:

Saturday, Feb. 20th
1. Food for foodbank (dropped at church)
2-4. Bag Sarah clothes - to Hub (note - this is a 2nd hand store where my Mom volunteers, and where the proceeds are used to support the needy in their community)
5. Bag of Real Simple Magazines - to Hub
6-7. Bag of clothes back to Isha (more on this in another post)

Then - due to illness...and more illness...we stalled out at 7. Until yesterday, that is. My wonderful parents came down for the day with the express purpose of watching Teddy while we tackled a whole bunch of purging projects in the basement.

Our basement is large, and we have an enormous crawlspace. We'd been taking advantage of this, piling things down there (neatly, but without any rhyme or reason). Also housed downstairs are the 8 bookshelves of books we inherited from my Aunt Flo. We'd gone through them last year, pulling all the duplicates and triplicates (I am not kidding - we had overlapping tastes) and all the books we'd never read (I don't need 35 vegetarian and/or low fat cookbooks). We had a whole bunch of old VHS tapes (that had stuff like Felicity taped from TV during the original series run) and some old movies. We also had a TONNE of cardboard boxes we'd been saving - ones for things like the TV, the jumperoo, etc. Out it all went.

The majority of it went out in boxes (that were then refilled) or on its own, so I am approximating in terms of shopping bags:

• 4 boxes of books to our local Ottawa Public Library branch (where the librarian was so pleased at the condition of the books) = 8 bags
• 2 more boxes of books for the library (these are the last things to go -- the librarian ran out of storage room, and we'll bring them this week) = 4 bags
• 2 boxes of less pristine books to the Hub = 4 bags
• 1 HUGE box of VHS movies to the Hub = 2 bags
• 2 boxes of books, tapes to my parents = 4 bags
• 4 bags of Dave/Teddy/Sarah clothes for the Hub = 4 bags
• 3 large piles of collapsed cardboard for recycling = 4 bags
• 1 overstuff garbage bag of old VHS tapes, drop sheets, and cassette tapes (sadly, cannot recycle these) = 3 bags
• 2 old scanners, 1 VCR with remote and 1 DVD with remote** to the Salvation Army (they do electronic recycling if they can't sell them, but all still work) = 2 bags
• 1 bag of non-perishable food for the food bank (dropped at church today

That's a total of 32 bags (+4 of books we'll soon bring to the library) for a total of 36 yesterday! And almost all are going charity or being recycled!

That brings our Lenten total to 43. I have surpassed the goal, but we've a few more things to do over the next two weeks. We have a whole bunch of empty bottles to return for the deposits, and I should shred some old paper documentation...that should buy us another 10 bags or so (I wish I were exaggerating!). Plus, I will be bringing more food to church to donate to the food bank (since I kept forgetting Sunday after Sunday!).

Speaking of things I will do over the next several weeks - I will be posting here. There are some announcements and stories coming, and I have waited long enough to post. Stay tuned!