Photo Credit: St. Vincent de Paul Louisville
So much of what we get to stockpile can be purchased for cheap or even FREE. One of the blessings we have is to provide things to missions or organizations that are in need. Last week, in this post, Jennifer asked where to donate the Glucose Meters that are always FREE or a money-maker. Tara commented that she donates them to her vet – GENIUS! I never would have thought to donate these to a vet or animal shelter! Tara, what a great idea and thanks for leaving the comment!
I’m curious, what do you do with your surplus of stuff? I’ve talked many times about Target Dayton. I have a box set aside with our stockpile to efficiently throw donation items into after my weekly shopping trips. When my box gets full, it’s ready to go off to Target Dayton.
What about you? Where do you take your donation items? Do you have a process for organizing everything until it’s time to make the trip to donate? I’d love to hear you! You may just inspire someone to find a place to donate items too!
If you are interested in finding food shelters near you, you can find a shelter with help from Feeding America’s food bank search. Churches are another great place to offer your items as well.
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Since I’m a part of the local chapter of Healthy Families, I like to give back to them any chance I get. I also donate items any time there is a food drive or health products drive for our local Laurel Shelter. Pretty soon, I’m going to start donating my non-perishable foods and give some away to a local food pantry.
I like to believe what comes around goes around!
I donate medical items to Dayton Children’s Medical Center.
All household/personal/food/clothing items go to St. Vincent’s.
And I donate my time to Children’s and The Dakota Center!
Consider donating your extra items to local schools when it makes sense. A lot of teachers have to use their own money to get snacks and supplies for some of the children in their classes because the kids don’t have the money to bring them. My mom has been able to use a lot of my stockpiled stuff in her classroom, like tissue, soap, individually wrapped food and the free samples of food I get in the mail. Those small boxes of cereal make wonderful snacks for kids who don’t have money for snacks.
Anyone know if the Cincinnati children’s hospitals (liberty campus or Fairfield are the closest) take medical supplies?
I donate the glucose meters to the American Red Cross. They use them to replace meters lost to fire and other disasers.
I donate food items at church for the local food bank.
AmVets is great for donating household items – they even pick them up at your house!
I donate items to a place called Community Sharing. They provide food and household items for low income families in our community.
I have been looking for a place to donate glucose meters and other medications! So glad to hear of the vet and Red Cross. I am planning to make a donation to Operation: Taking Care of Our Own which gives toothpaste, etc. to soldiers after they are checked into the hospital around the world. I don’t know if it’s just local, but I live in the Dallas area.
We have a local food bank that has been happy to take the glucose meters, as well as everything else I take over there. They’re always thrilled with all the free CVS toothpaste and goodies I drop off.
I’ve only been stockpiling for a year. I donated some things to a special ed teacher at the school where I work so she can use them in teaching her students about having good hygiene. At Christmas, a coworker (who also stockpiles) found out that a student’s family needed help, and we put together a huge box of toiletries to go with the presents we bought.
I’ve not donated a ton since I don’t CVS much, but in Nashville I have donated toiletries to Room in the Inn churches (homeless ministry) and food items to the Tennessee Baptist Children’s Home.
I donate the meters and other items to people traveling overseas. As a mother of a son adopted from Russia, the easiest way to get anything over there is by other traveling families. I recently sent two meters to a group who traveled to Kyrgyzstan and I sent a box today with 2 meters and other items to a family going on a church mission to Nicaragua to help the teenage girls there, but their medical team could use the meters.
I donate to my church food pantry… and lots of friends. OH and my parents. Hehehe… Isn’t that more of a payback?
I did just recently learn about the monitors beng used at Vet Clinics too! I might check out that route sometime when I pick one up again.
I suggest donating baby supplies like diapers, wipes, and formula (even the samples you receive in the mail!) to your local crisis pregnancy center ministry. These centers will distribute the items to new moms in your area that are in need.
My church also collects food each Communion Sunday (first Sunday of the month). When we come in on those Sundays, we all just drop our food (and household item) donations off near the door. At the beginning of the service, the pastor just announces that those in need are invited to take what they need after the service, no questions asked. Any leftovers are taken to the food bank, but it’s rare that anything is actually left over. Our church is in a pretty low-income area and there are many people at our church that need the items right now.
Does anyone know where we can donate expired coupons? I don’t really want to pay the shipping to send a ton overseas?
Lori, I know in the post I did a while back on Expired Coupons, there is a link to the USO homepage and the Overseas Coupon Program page. You could check with either of these sites to see if there is an option to send them to a local distribution place without paying a fee.
I second Dana – Church Food Pantries and Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Our local pregnancy center gives each new mom they’ve worked with a big basket of all kinds of baby supplies, including diapers and wipes.
You can also send care packages to deployed American Soldiers – http://www.anysoldier.com . They need all kinds of the stuff that you can always get free couponing/drugstore shopping. What a great way to say thank you to our military!
Great post Andrea :)
Well I usually call up my sisters who do not coupon and see if they need any of the items I am not going to use. I have also donated to a Battered Women’s Shelter and we just started donating to our local Ministerial Alliance. At the Ministerial Alliance they will take anything including over the counted medicines.
Here is what I do: Right now I am well stocked up on most health and beauty aids so when I find more at free or almost free I go ahead and get them for donation. I bag them up immediately in a plastic grocery bag. When I have a couple of full bags I take them to donate.
The Office on Aging is a national organization that works with low income seniors. They have assigned volunteer “visitors” that visit seniors that may not ordinarily get many visitors. The Office on Aging works with the nursing homes to identify the senior’s needs – perhaps they need toiletries, slippers, or sweat pants. During the holidays, the Office on Aging has an “Angel Tree”program where they collect items and then deliver the wrapped presents to the seniors.
This is a great organization and it is a wealth of knowledge for people with aging parents in general.
So glad to find out about the vet taking the glucose monitors. I’ve had 7 sitting here for a long time and contacted a local vet. She was so excited to take them off my hands and I’ll be delivering them tomorrow!! Brilliant!!
Cereal, cake mixes, Lysol spray: Ronald McDonald House (these items were on their Wish List…can be found on-line); Toiletries: local homeless coalition; pet food/treats and newspapers: no-kill shelter up the street; laundry and cleaning supplies and other items that can’t be purchased with food stamps: Women in Transition group in town (poverty-stricken women working HARD to make their lives better); OTC meds: medical clinic in more improverished part of town (they loved the bayer crystals and ecotrin).
All of these organizations are within a few miles of each other, so I do a drop off about every other month. I store everything in a reusable shopping bags in the hall closet and sort just before drop-off day. We don’t have huge quantities, but enough to share.
My church’s Evergreen Group (read: Senior’s Group) makes a quarterly trip to Grundy Mountain Mission and all of my extra stuff goes there. Not only are they an orphanage and a school, they also help the people in the community around them. They are in a very poor area of the Appalachian Mountains. It was exciting and sad when I took some of the packaged Venus Razor “Gift Sets” and they were excited because some of the teenage girls had birthdays coming up and they had nothing to give them and they knew that they would love the sets. One of the ladies even broke into tears and knew that the donation had been a gift from God! It was a very humbling experience to know how truly blessed we are!
I donate to various causes through my church.
Well personally we like to donate locally. To me helping people in your community is important! We donate our outgrown clothing to Hope House (a local homeless shelter). I am in contact with people there and in our community they are seeing a lot more homeless families coming through the doors, so I have been taking them baby things as well. I donate a lot of food to friends and relatives. I also take things to the food pantry that helps out our community. For the diabetic monitors, I called Cinci Childrens and got recommended to contact their local chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Association. I then take my kiddos and we donate that together, so that they can see that they are helping someone out. My oldest is now asking when we can go through stuff to give away to boys and girls who don’t have stuff (she’s 4), so I think it’s working!!
We have a lot of storage space in our outbuilding, so we keep shelves stocked with all our extras. It stays unlocked, and friends and family know they can come by anytime they need something! It’s a blessing to them and a blessing to me to know I’m helping families that are struggling financially. (And if I ever run out of something myself, I don’t have to make a special trip to the store!)
I donate half to the Jacksonville Care Channel (non-profit that helps people) and the other half to a friend that has adopted 6 foster kids.
North Dearborn Pantry located in Bright, Indiana is a great place to share the surplus. They serve approx. 200 families each month and are a nonprofit, all volunteer organization.
I donate a lot to REST (gives homeless people a place to sleep at night and changes locations nightly) and Maryville Academy for children. Also the Ark in Chicago.
I am with Rhonda… I donate most to the Ronald McDonald House or to the HOPE ministry at our church. I felt really wasteful picking up yet ANOTHER toothbrush until I realized… hold on wait… I could GIVE that to someone who didn’t have the $1 or the know how to get it free!
Ronnie Houses are really to close to my heart as our family has directly benefited from the RMH charities in several states throughout our daughter’s life. I know what their mission is and it is one that is very much appreciated by so many.
I am glad more people are aware of this great service project. I would like to take it a step further and ask people to consider donating coupons as well. There is a website called grocerycouponsforfree.org that has a list of military bases you can send your expired coupons to. They also have a list of food shelves that you can send your unexpired coupons to. Both are great service projects and grocerycouponsforfree.org does a great job in explaining these programs. I hope more people get involved with these types of programs. These coupons go a long ways to helping people reduce their grocery bill!