On another chilly evening in Lewisham, 5 GoodGymers made their way to Traid to help manage their stock rotation ahead of the new season. Traid accept donations of unwanted clothing and divert some 3,000 tonnes of clothes from landfill and waste each year.

There was a satisfying simplicity to the task at hand, with EVERY item of clothing throughout the shop needing to be removed from the rails and displays and placed in one of the many tall cages, ready for transport to Traid’s depot in Wembley, while the hangers were divided between plastic and metal in separate boxes.

Thankfully we weren’t the only volunteers on the case as there were hundreds of coats, jackets, shirts, trousers, blouses and skirts to be rehomed. We were, though, the most efficient group on the case (or so I like to think!) as we quickly got into the rhythm of creating piles, grouping hangers and filling the cages en masse.

So efficient were we, in fact, that after only an hour we had cleared the whole shop, ready for the restocking efforts to continue the next day. All that was left was some final bagging up of shoe pairs (no singles, please!) and the sealing of hanger boxes before we signed off on a good evening’s work!