On July 15,
2013 I challenged myself to give something away every day for one year and blog
about it. I wrote the criteria that I would follow. One stipulation was that when
I gave something away it had to be meaningful to me, not an item that I was
just going to throw away anyway. Today I was challenged to give more of
something that I didn’t think I had.
One of my
childhood friends posted on Facebook an appeal for some women in my hometown in
West Virginia. The local HIV agency is doing a clothing drive for four women
who are desperately in need of business and personal attire. Having been
infected with HIV by their cheating husbands (ex-husbands now), they are
seeking jobs and need help. The post said, “We need everything a working girl
would need: purses, wallets, jewelry, coats, stockings, whatever.”
When I saw
this post I knew I was going to have to give away clothes that I had previously decided I should keep. As
I got ready for church this morning, I was trying to decide which of my jackets
to wear with my choices of pants. And then I thought of these women who don’t
even have one business jacket or nice pair of pants.
Over the
last year and a half I created a system where I put a tag on the coat hanger of
items that I didn’t wear that season. When I wore an item I took the tag off. At
the end of the season, I moved my summer clothes to the front closet and my
winter clothes to my bedroom closet. Anything that still had a tag on it, I delivered
to Goodwill last month.
So, I found
a beautiful dress and matching coat that barely have the price tags off of them,
that I have never worn, even though I’ve had them for a few years. I also found
more dresses, skirts and shoes. I have a stockpile of Clinique makeup that
comes as a “free” gift that has never been opened.
Today’s
gift was to put these clothes in a box to take to the post office. It felt
really good to dig deep even when I thought I didn’t have anything else to give.
In Giving,
Robin
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