Unclaimed Clothing Donation

[chcutler]

What does everyone do with unclaimed or lost and found clothing? Does anyone run a donation program. I am currently working with a clothing donation company and am trying to guage interest in launching a nationwide campaign throughout laundromats to collect unclaimed clothing and rather then throwing it away, donate it. Anyone have any thoughts?

[Paco]

The homeless come in on a regular basis to pick through our leftovers. Once the bin gets too full, I take it to the donation drop off at the local super market

[laundryboy2]

Donate in your community, there's plenty of need.

[mjwalsh]

Originally Posted by chcutler

What does everyone do with unclaimed or lost and found clothing? Does anyone run a donation program. I am currently working with a clothing donation company and am trying to guage interest in launching a nationwide campaign throughout laundromats to collect unclaimed clothing and rather then throwing it away, donate it. Anyone have any thoughts?

chcutler & others,

Here is a case for laundromats in general needing adequate space to logistically temporarily store the clothes left. It is also a case for employee payroll time available to make sure the clothes are dried & sorted properly. When laundry operators can't afford the behinds the scenes work & storage involved ... other people are affected also.

We have always dropped off at numerous non profits here in the city who are very grateful to receive the often very high quality & usable clothing. That spans a period of over 50 years. There are needs out there. One local non profit has even found ways to economically transport needed clothes to extreme poverty areas of Central America.

We keep the clothes in storage for at least 30 days but more often a few months longer because that way we have a bigger batch when we deliver the clothing.

Anything less than that is a little too much like sweeping a need under the rug ... so to speak.

mike walsh king koin of bismarck

[surfflite]

After 30 days unclaimed they go down the street to the Safeway shopping center, where there is a donation bin.

[CanCanCase]

WDF is never left behind because I require all orders to be prepaid. I've made one exception in 3 years for a good weekly customer, and after leaving 200# of baby clothes with me for over a month, I finally caught her on the phone and let her know that I would donate them to Goodwill if they weren't picked up in 72 hours. When she did pick them up (the next morning) I reminded her about bending my rules for her, and that I didn't appreciate nearly getting stuck with a $300 bill - not to mention storage.

Items left behind in a washer are usually kept for a day or two - bagged and tied in the back room. Usually I'll get a call asking if anyone found the missed load, and I'll give a courtesy re-wash or dry with several dryer sheets to freshen the sour load... I don't spend any more time or resources than necessary on truly abandoned loads. The local charities all have far more resources than I do to re-wash, freshen, fold and store things. Heck, most of those resources are paid for by my tax dollars anyway, so why would I want to re-wash or put any additional labor into a load being donated to charity anyway?

-Case

[surfflite]

I do get way less clothing left behind after I started making my WDF prepay.