Box'd!

Thanks to the helpful helpfulness of fellow Georgia ex-volunteer Lisa Erdeljon and her mom, my mom, and Dad & happy helper Judy, the vast majority of the blankets and coats and stuff have been organized into boxes. They brought a good bit of sorted donations and empty boxes down with them, so kudos to them.




Total so far: 50 boxes

Stuff remaining to be boxed: Not much

Project should be done: Soon

Ringo Says...

... the project is coming to a close. I can't even fathom how I'm going to get the mountain of blankets we've already collected into boxes, and seeing as the original project end date was set for this past Monday, all the boxes will be taken down on Thursday or Friday.

Here to tell you about it is Ringo Starr. Sort of.



(That video made no sense to you unless you'd seen this video)

After we've got everything boxed and set, I'll post a final count, after which we can pat ourselves on the backs. Of course, we're going to be patting ourselves on the backs while a monstrous pile of blankets gets dumped in the river next April after sitting in an account-past-due storage unit all winter unless we get some shipping money.

A million thanks to the people have donated to the project already. The rest of you, take those faceless initials and town names as a shining example for us all. Wouldn't we rather bring smiles to the faces of hundreds of Georgians instead of a giant scowl to a fisherman who hooks a coat from the riverbed next spring?

Checking In

Here's your second project update video. These'll keep coming as long as Mom continues to be fascinated by the video-editing capabilities of her Macbook.



The day after we filmed this (namely, today), we received calls from three drop-off points requesting a pick-up, and now there's a mountain of unboxed blankets and coats in the storage space piled next to the 22 boxes you see here. This is delightful, though we're still without sufficient shipping money... if you were waiting for your opportunity to donate until after I had started to feel creeping panic, then this is your moment.

We still need twice as much shipping money as the $850 we've raised so far, at least.

Give & Let Buy

The title makes no sense, but I like the song it (loosely) derives from, so it shall remain. This post will give you a sneak peek at the generous local businesses that have contributed invaluably to the project; we'll also make our first foray into spending project money.

The Shipping Store, Wildewood Shopping Center
John Boyd, Owner

A big round of applause for Mr Boyd's generous donation of 31 brand new cardboard boxes to the project! He even drove them back to our house in his pickup. Cheers to you, sir.

Security Storage, Hollywood, MD
John Charles, Manager

Huzzah for Security Storage, who is allowing the Blankets for Georgia project to use a 10'x10' storage space for free! Well, actually, it's at the extremely discounted price of $1 per month. Huzzahs all around!

Here's some numbers so far, which would not have been possible without the assistance of the above businesses. Note: these numbers only represent what we've cataloged and boxed so far, and does not include the piles of stuff still sitting in our makeshift household storage room.

- 34 blankets and comforters
- 31 sweaters/shirts
- 30 coats/jackets
- 26 baby onesies
- 15 baby shirts

And a last note... as you can see on the right, we've raised $815 so far. There's a new list below that for expenses; so far we've had to purchase more shipping tape and a padlock for the free shipping space. Keep posted for updates there.

Update time!

We're at the halfway point now in the blanket drive, and here's what's going on so far:

8 full boxes of donations
1 room half-full of donations that have yet to be boxed
$800 toward shipping

Huzzah! But keep it coming... $2000 is the goal for fundraising, which is the cost of sending a big load of boxes via freight to Georgia. Also, we'll want to have a big load of boxes to send, so keep throwing your blankets and winter clothes at us!