Six speedy runners from Barnsley and Sheffield ran the 2km across town to help the charity H.O.P.E in the community with the epic task of sorting a huge cupboard full of donated toys!

Tonight we were heading to St George's Church to help the charity H.O.P.E sort out their storage cupboard. The charity was established last September by a local guy called Peter, who wanted to provide a space for all members of the community to come together and learn. The charity is still in the early stages and have received most of the equipment they use through donations. They needed our help to sort out their huge storage cupboard and clean the childrens toys that are used at the free play-group.

We welcomed a newbie to Barnsley tonight, one of the Sheffield GG runnersSarahjoined us, let's give her a cheer!. After a relatively short run there on one of my many detours through town, we arrived and Peter and his helper showed us what there was to do and crikey there was a lot - which was good news for us as we love a challenge!

First things first, we set to work cleaning all the large toys that were a bit sticky and grubby. Using soapy water, anti-bac spray and cloths, we cleaned tractors, trains, see-saws, soft play, prams, trolleys, toolbenches and baby baths! Pretty much every type of toy you could think of! In total we cleaned 21 pieces of soft play and about 30 large toys!

Team work makes a dream work!

After cleaning all the large toys, we split off to sort out the large boxes of toys and crafty items, making a list of everything that was inside each one and checking for faulty/broken items. James assumed the chief elf position of toy tester and set to work testing all of the musical and mechanical toys, winding them up, pressing the buttons and making sure they sound worked on them all!

Crafty Clair set about sorting the boxes of arts & crafts materials, carefully sorting through the contents and recording what there was and figuring out what some of the more obscure looking items were! Luckily Jason was familiar with Play-Doh and could identify the use of little plastic sticks!

Sarah seemed to be throughly enjoying herself over the other side of the room, tasked with the job of sorting through the huge box of semi-clothed plastic dolls. With her quality control hat firmly on, she checked all limbs and faces were intact and safe for children to play with! Thankfully there was a huge box of dolls clothes for the naked dolls, which Sarah then carefully sorted through.

Jason focussed on the duplex toys, that were very grubby! After preparing a large tub of water for them, he left them to soak, noting they would probably need to stay in there for some time to get them clean!

Clothes-minded Sharon worked with me to sort out the huge box of kids fancy dress, writing down exactly what there was and throwing away anything that had seen better days! We had lots of fun figuring out what outfits there were an even trying a few on (see pics!).

After spending SO long toying with the idea of whether or not to stop the task and starting the fitness part of the evening, we toytally ran out of time! I had planned a lovely relaxing bit of yoga for runners, so to give the group a taster, we all assumed a downward dog, giving our hamstrings a nice stretch!

We said our goodbyes and headed back the quick way, finishing with 4 lovely flights of stairs to get the heartrate pumping to finish the night!

Another great session, see you all next week for our intergenerational activity evening at Lavender Court! Sign up here.