The Road Home

 Araceli came up with the idea of helping out at a homeless shelter for one of her 10-hour projects for Young Women's.  Before I knew it, she had called The Road Home in Salt Lake and arranged to volunteer in their warehouse.  The Road Home is a great organization that does a lot of good in our community.  In addition, she put the word out to the Dopp family and her friends at church that she was taking donations of clothing and household items.  In no time, the back of my car was full of donations!  We have very generous neighbors, family and friends.  Thanks so much, you guys.  Ari feels very loved!

 Today was the day we were scheduled to do our two hours of service.  Ari was pretty ambitious going into this project.  She said she wanted to give them the biggest donation they have ever seen!  Her hopes were dashed when we arrived at the shelter at the same time as a horse trailer from Wyoming, loaded to the brim with donations.  Our carload was a fraction of what was in the trailer.

In a way, it was fun to sort clothes and do laundry in those industrial-strength machines.  In another way, it was depressing to be there in that dreary warehouse with those bags of sometimes dirty clothes and the ambitious, hard-working, yet roughed-up men who were running the operation.  Our four man-hours really did help.  The guys working there were very grateful to see us.  The shelter could have used a dozen more helpers, in fact.  But help with what?  It really made me rethink what I donate, and I'll tell you why.

The warehouse was piled to the ceiling with the donations form the Wyoming group, a group who comes every year and makes a donation from their community.  The guy in charge told me on the sly, "Most of what they bring goes to D. I., but I wouldn't tell them that."

How it works, and what Ari and I were assigned to, is that someone sorts through the bags and bags and bags of donations looking for one or two good things.  Something that looks brand-new, is in season and is in a size there is a need for.  All toys, books, DVD's and games go to D.I. or Goodwill, whose trucks are waiting outside to be loaded.  All baby blankets and clothes go to D.I. because the shelter has plenty.  Some of the bags, I pawed through a little bit and I could tell there was nothing good enough.  A couple of bags were wet on the inside, like they had been left outside.  One had muddy clothes in it.  I felt bad, because those people who made the donation were so gratified, taking pictures of themselves in front of the pile of donations, driving back to Wyoming feeling like they had made a horse-trailer-sized difference in the world.

Meanwhile, volunteers like me discarded 90% of it as unusable for the homeless.

Why?  Because the homeless shelter already has plenty of like-new clothing in every size.  They have shelves full of toiletries, they turn away warm blankets.  They have a six-month supply of laundry soap.  They're all set.  And then there is all this backbreaking labor of lifting and sorting bags of crap from people like me who are trying to be generous.  I don't know much about Goodwill, but I remember touring D.I. and being told that anything ripped, torn or stained goes to be shredded and turned into felt blankets to be shipped overseas.  Now that I have had the opportunity to go through a hundred bags of donations, I imagine most of what is donated ends up as felt.

I think from now on, I'll pass on all of our good hand-me-downs to friends and just throw the rest in the garbage.  I know we're supposed to "reduce, reuse and recycle," but what about the impact of all this crap on the already-strained resources of the organizations we're giving it to?  It takes a lot of time to sort through it all.  And you wouldn't believe how fast a pair of shoes can get separated in the melee, or how many items are just discarded out of hand.

The bottom line is, we live in a land of embarrassing riches if the homeless shelter is only taking clothing with tags on it.  They are being selective like that because they simply do not have the space for anything but the cream of the crop.  They are inundated with generosity, which is it own burden on them, in a way.  And yet, leaving the shelter, Ari and I drove past the perennial droves of men lying listless on the sidewalk outside Catholic Food Services, past the groups of derelict smokers huddled together on the corner outside the shelter, in line for a bed for the night.  I don't know how on earth to solve those problems, and as much as I think it is wonderful that a homeless child can choose some good clothes, I came away dejected because all the clothing in the world can't solve anything.

The man in charge of us worked very, very hard, knew what he was doing, and accomplished an incredible amount.  I thought of all the whining I do about housework and was humbled by this guy.  He did more laundry in one hour than I do in a week, and it never stops.  He washes bedding and towels, mostly.  The laundry was more gratifying for Ari and me that the sorting because I knew those sheets and blankets would go back on beds that people really needed.  Still, though, the best solution for homelessness would be friends and family helping friends and family, but for myriad reasons, that is so much more complicated than it sounds.  Impossible, in many cases.

Driving home, I broke the silence by saying, "Let's never go back there again, OK, Ari?"

"OK," she said quietly.  Evidently, we're not cut out for service to our fellow man.  It's too demoralizing. Ugh.  I'm a loser.