3 Goodgymers practised their packing skills to support LWS Night Shelter with organising their donations at their new storage facility.

It was great to see all the new shelving in place at the storage unit. Tonight's task involved helping to re-pack donations from their temporary boxes and crates into more permanent boxes that fit nicely on the new storage racks, helping to make the most efficient use of the space and making it easier to find items.

We started with the toiletries, transferring over toothbrushes, toothpaste and shower gel into boxes and stacking them in their new homes according to the shelving plan. Next we stacked a box of beans on their new shelf. We finished off with transferring some hats, gloves and socks from their current enormous boxes that don't fit on the shelving at all, into boxes that fit perfectly on the shelves, allowing them to be placed in the correct spot.

With an hour of sorting under our belt, we headed back out into the cold for a jog around Victoria Park and the Pump Room Gardens.

It was great to see things taking shape at the storage facility and will be fantastic once all the donations are sorted and in their new home.

2 Goodgymers helped other volunteers from LWS Night Shelter with their big move!

The Night Shelter has taken on a new storage facility nearer to the centre of Leamington town centre which will make their life much easier when transporting stock from storage to St John's Church Hall for their food service. In order to make this happen, all stock from the old storage facility needed to be loaded into a van, transported over and unloaded before being sorted and stacked back in date order.

Sounds straight forward right?! The first van full had all the food supplies, a lot of which were tins, bottles of squash and other heavy items, with some crates needing two people to carry them. So we got a real workout getting all the crates down to the van and loading it up. We then headed over to the new facility where they were unloaded and left some of the LWS team there to sort the crates while we headed straight back to get the second van full. This time is was toiletries (including some pretty heavy crates of shampoo, shower gel etc), LOTS of bedding that is used when the over night facility provided by the Night Shelter is running, as well as some items needed to run the food service such as hand gel, toilet roll, takeaway food boxes and cutlery.

A quick bite to eat to refuel, leaving just one more van full of items including yet more bedding, clothing, more toilet roll and a few random odds and ends such as books, games and a guitar - which Nigel attempted to tune whilst carrying it out to the van!

With everything in the new storage facility we had run out of time to get everything completely sorted, so that will have to wait until another day - but at least everything is in! What a workout in this heat - go team :-)

1 Goodgymer returned to help LWS Night Shelter with sorting donations.

Today was a momentous occasion as after 4 months of regular community missions to help LWS Night Shelter with sorting their donations that were received over the festive period - we finally sorted and organised the last of the items in the storage facility!

The last few bits of clothing were sorted today which involved an awful lot of socks, boxer shorts and coats, along with a few scarves, hats and gloves. It was then a case of labeling and moving the boxes around making the whole container look a lot more organised.

It has been a huge team effort to help this charity get all their donations into tip top shape with a total of 111 people hours of work.

Whilst the task is complete for now - I'm sure we will be back :-)

2 Goodgymers returned to LWS Night Shelter to help with sorting donations. Today it was time for some more clothing sorting. With quite a few bags of mixed clothing left to sort, we found a majority of them contained ladies coats, so we had to start a whole new box for these. There was also a few items of children's clothing sorted and of course some more socks, gloves and hats.

We also whipped through all the food items and dug out anything with a best before date in the near future and crated them up ready for collection ahead of this week's food service to make sure items are distributed to guests or used in this week's food service.

Another job well done!

2 Goodgymers returned to LWS Night Shelter for more sorting of donations.

Today it was part 3 of clothing sorting. Some of this entailed finding new, bigger boxes for some of the items that had been sorted previously such as coats. The hats, scarves and gloves were in such a big box that they now justified being separated further into hats/gloves and a separate box for scarves.

With about 10 more bags of clothing sorted, we eventually got to the back of the final storage unit only to find two huge boxes of socks/boxers to sort - but that will have to wait until our next visit!

2 Goodgymers returned to the storage facility for LWS Night Shelter to sort more of their donations.

Today we started with a box of micro rice that had been uncovered at the back of one of the storage units last week (a few sessions after we had already dated and sorted all the other micro rice - argh)! So that was slotted into the correct crates by date.

It was then a case of sorting out lots of odds and ends in all 4 of the storage units, condensing down various item types to free up space and crates, whilst also making sure that any out of date items were separated out.

Unfortunately we were so busy with our organising and sorting hats on that we completely forgot to take any photos for the run report! So instead I've included some from a previous sorting visit :-)