Goodwill Requests That You Please Not Donate Your Trash to Them

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In the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, literally hundreds of thousands of people began to spend extraordinary amounts of time at home. Unprecedented amounts of time.

We were scared of the illness that had essentially shut down America. We were so frightened to be around one another that we holed ourselves into our homes like a bear hibernates in a darkened cave. It wasn't long before the newness of "working from home" and those dreaded Zoom meetings gave way to boredom.

We were only able to watch so many Friends re-runs or create new food concoctions before the desperate isolation and doldrums had us looking for anything to occupy our time.

It was at this point that we began to thoroughly clean out our homes. We started in the garage and worked all the way through the house before ending with a deep cleaning of even the attic.

Flustered with what to do with all the items we had removed from those dark corners, loads of people tried to do the right thing and donate them to Goodwill.  While the idea was noble, there was a slight glitch in the system.

Lots of those donations were just junk!  And Goodwill doesn't need our junk!  So, they have politely asked that we not give them anything that would fall under that headline.

They ask that any donations in the future be something that other people might actually want. Totally understandable.

Goodwill says they certainly don't want to discourage people from donating, but if that donation is essentially garbage, like a table with only 3 legs, they have to pay to have it hauled away, and that diverts money away from other things they do, like job training.

One rep for Goodwill said that if your "judgy mother-in-law" would say it's trash, it's probably trash.