St Leonard's Hospice are opening a bright and shiny new 3-floor charity shop in the centre of York on 31st January and needed some help getting all the stock ready for the big day.

We were warmly greeted by Jill who gave us a quick tour of each department in the shop and took us upstairs to show us our task. We were soon joined by Nikki, "fresh" (ie wet through and muddy) from an earlier task and Louise. There was quite a large pile of bedding, curtains, tablecloths and other bits of fabric that needed measuring and tagging then hanging on the rails, ready to be priced up and then put in the designated place in the new shop.

We had great fun measuring and tagging (checking carefully what size was a double or kingsize duvet cover) and discussing whether we should still measure the curtains in inches or metres.

Jill brought us hot drinks and more hangers as we soon used up the nice wooden ones. The rails were soon full of a wonderful selection of bedding, curtains, etc and a couple of items that we thought were scarves but had been mistaken for blankets!

I had to leave but the rest of the team stayed on, moving on to: "weird blankets, miscellaneous sheets and pairless curtains. Also some V-shaped pillowcases that we decided were fake boyfriend pillows!" - Nikki.

A lot was achieved in 2 hours but more help is needed so I'm sure we will be back to help again soon.