Last month we cleared the contents from an art cupboard at Holy Trinity Lamorbey Primary School.

Tonight we were back with Jane, the vice principal, to dismantle the big shelving unit in the middle of the cupboard. Cue screwdrivers 🪛, saws🪚and hammers 🔨, and impressive team work in a confined space.

As the cupboard got emptier, the corridor outside got fuller with the demolition debris, so we found a trolley and did several trips to the skip in the car park.

Next door we took on the gentler task of tidying the computer room. With laptops, headphones and mice neatly organised it looked spick-and-span for classes to use tomorrow.

Cupboard swept, corridor cleared and computer room in order, we posed for a team photo and it was time to say goodbye to Jane and head home.

I'm constantly amazed by how much a posse of GoodGymers can get done in just an hour. And always with such good cheer and enthusiasm.

Looking forward to next month's visit to help tick off more tasks on the school's long to-do list .

On Sunday, a cheerful crew of GoodGymers headed to a very trashed corner of Blackfen, near the A2 and the Co-op car park, ready to take on… well, far too much rubbish. What followed was part clean-up, part treasure hunt, and part therapy session.

By the end of the mission, we’d collected 12 bags of general rubbish, 3 bags of glass bottles (safely popped into recycling), and—because why not—one sewing machine. Yes. A sewing machine. Sadly, it did not come with instructions or a matching table.

To keep spirits high, we played Litter Picking Bingo, and can proudly say we found everything on the card—and then some. Full house, anyone?

While it’s always a bit heartbreaking to see how careless people can be, every GoodGym session restores our faith in humanity. Because for every fly-tipped sewing machine, there’s a group of volunteers willing to show up, muck in, and make things better—one bag at a time 💛♻️

Blackfen is cleaner, our bingo cards are complete, and humanity is back on the “mostly decent” list. Another good job done! 💪✨

For our midweek task this week, we were back at Holy Trinity Lamorbey Primary School where we tackled the Art Cupboard of Doom 😱.

Some of us ran from the leisure centre, while others made their own way there. We were greeted by the school’s vice principal, Jane, and her gorgeous dog Brecon, who spends one day a week helping out in classrooms.

Brecon kept a close eye on our antics as we got to grips with the task at hand: emptying the long-neglected, overstuffed art cupboard, ferrying everything into a spare classroom next door ready to be sorted and reorganised by the school's art teachers.

And there was certainly a lot to move!

We came across every kind of art, craft, and D&T material you’d expect to find 🎨🖌️⚙️✂️, and some unexpected items too, including two vintage weather-display boards (likely from the 1970s), a small bongo drum, and a little paint-smudged teddy that had clearly slipped behind the shelves and been long-since forgotten.

Between trips, we took turns throwing Brecon’s ball along the corridor, keeping her happily occupied in an endless game of fetch.

Just one hour later, after plenty of back-and-forth and the occasional exclamation from Jane, “Oh, so that’s where that went", "I was looking for that last week!” and “Why would anyone have kept that?!”, it was mission accomplished. We'd cleared the cupboard and filled a stack of bin bags with bottles of dried-up plaster paints, set-hard paintbrushes, and rock-solid modelling clay.

In the new year, we hope to return to take down some of the old shelving and give the cupboard a fresh coat of paint to complete its Cinderella-like transformation into a clean and usable space once more. ✨