We were helping out at Growbaby this evening - It's an amazing hub that supports families that are in need of baby equipment and clothes age 0-5 years old. They have lots of donations and so therefore need lots of hands to organise and manage everything... GoodGym Kingston provided just this - 10 pairs of will hands to help out with a whole load of different tasks.

We set about with a variety of jobs. In no particular order: re-organising the toy boxes (and getting rid of random plastic bits that don't belong); sorting clothes; checking the shoes are paired and in the right boxes; flatpacking the excess of cardboard boxes; building a clothes rail and then filling it with a number of autumn coats in time for the pre-term rush; clearing a load of items from the spooky 'room of doom' in the basement... this list goes on...

As is generally the way with GG, we flew through the tasks and really did prove that many hands make light work. Tanya, the lady in charge of the charity, was very impressed by the achievement after only 1 hour :)

Today 7 goodgymers did a litter pick in their local areas, to help improve their surroundings. Getting out to stretch the legs, anything to avoid the housework. 🙌

As the students had left town for the Summer it was a good opportunity to give the Kingsgate Church food bank a Summer clean.

Claire and Farzeen started working on the fridges and freezers cleaning away the pesky crumbs and washing all the shelves and drawers.

Meanwhile upstairs the team of Luke, Tom, Jenny, Anna and Enara started to sort the canned fruit, meatballs, soup and some very strange looking drinks to identify those which had expired or were close to expiry. Anything close to expiry was put at the top of the pile and everything that had expired was separated out.

One of the freezers needed a little help defrosting for its clean so Anna joined Farzeen with some hot water to give it a helping hand whilst Tom tackled the last fridge.

Everything cleaned and sorted some brave Goodgymers decided to try the mystery drinks that would apparently provide calmness. Some slightly odd expressions followed the tasting - very sweet flavoured with a combination of berries was the verdict. Let’s hope they provided a sense of calm and serenity.

For those that didn’t fancy the mystery drinks there was an assortment of soup, tinned fruit and shepherds pies to take home that were close to expiry and prevent unnecessary food waste.

A big welcome to our newcomers Jenny and Enara!