The textiles industry stands as one of the largest in the entire world, and many billions of garments are produced globally each and every year. After all, everyone needs some clothes to wear, ranging from everyday clothes to work or military uniforms, and the United States is both the largest consumer and producer of these clothes. The massive American clothing industry is growing every year, and today, the typical American consumer purchases twice as many clothes as they did last year. On top of that, many American households contain a lot of items, on average an incredible 300,000. These many items range from clothing articles and shoes to cookware and cutlery to books, kids’ toys, electronic goods, and furniture.
Many Americans, in fact, own more in their houses than they actually use, so these Americans are encouraged to find out where to donate household items in their area. An online search such as “where to donate household items San Diego CA” or “where to donate household items Manhattan” may be a good place to start. Many charity clothing pick up sites and charity foundations can be found across the United States where donations to veterans or families in need can be dropped off. Searching “where to donate household items” may show such a local site, and these donations centers are typically open 24 hours a day, every day of the year and are staffed largely by volunteers. Helping families in need is often gratifying and helps trim down a person’s cluttered inventory, and clothes donations are always welcomed.
On Textiles
One reason why Americans are urged to donate more clothes is simply to help change the textile industry’s poor reclamation rate. Clothes, linens, and bedding can be recycled and reused elsewhere, along with other materials such as steel, glass, plastic, wood, and paper. However, the textiles industry lags far behind those others in terms of reclamation, and in the 2010s, textiles in the U.S. had only a 15% reclamation rate, quite low by most standards. The problem is that many worn out, unwanted clothes are simply thrown away entirely, and the average American consumer discards some 70 pounds of textiles (clothes and otherwise) per year. This rapidly fills landfills with clothes and old bedding that isn’t doing anyone any good. Some old clothes are shredded and recycled to form industrial rags or furniture stuffing, but many people would agree that donating those clothes instead is a better idea.
A household may follow a simple procedure to determine what should be donated like this. Everyone can gather all clothes and personal accessories of all types from across the house and assemble it all into a single, large pile. This creates a total and convenient inventory of clothes, shoes, gloves, hats, scarves, and more. Now, everyone can sort through that large pile and determine what they want to keep and what should be given away. Clothes to be donated may be worn out, out of fashion, redundant, the wrong size, or otherwise not desired. They can be packed into boxes or bags for convenient transport to a local charity site, and the rest of the clothes can be put away. The donor may look up a local donations center if they don’t already know one, and drive there and hand over everything to the volunteers there.
Donating other Goods
Many American households have more clothes than they need, to be sure, but the same is also true of households goods such as cookware, old books, kids’ toys, storage equipment, decorative items, and even smaller pieces of furniture such as an ottoman or a short bookshelf. If a household is moving to a new location, for example, they can take stock of everything that is owned to trim it all down for the move. This may involve moving larger items to self-storage units, such as a spare couch or a car, but smaller items can be donated instead. Like with clothes, these items can be assembled by type, and everyone carefully determines what is still useful and desirable, and what is obsolete and unwanted. The excess goods, if they aren’t trash (such as badly water-damaged books), can be taken to local charities or goodwill stores that accept them.