August 12th, 2009
Tonight my most fashionable friend came over and helped me vet my wardrobe. I culled about a cubic metre of ill-fitting or unflattering or stupid clothes from my herd (stupid characterizing, for example, the shirt that made a plasticky “zip” noise when rubbed against itself or the dress with ribbons coming off the nipple area), and now have a huge pile of stuff to donate. I also succeeded in persuading Husband to get rid of the ugliest shirt he owns, a personal favourite of his, which is (to its credit) impervious to wrinkles… and to looking good.
I also decided to get rid of a bunch of old underpants, making room for new pairs that are not all wrecked by uncountable trips through the washer and dryer. You know, can I say here, that the only thing better than new underpants is virgin socks? My god, don’t you love the feeling of putting on a brand new pair of never before worn socks? Magic!
But I digress – here is my question: Is it okay to donate your old, used underwear (and bras) to good will? I figure poor people need underwear too but there is something about used underwear that is just… well. Let’s just say I would have to be well and truly without options before I would buy used underwear. But the world has people without options! Also, I think I would feel sort of embarrassed to drop off my old underwear for some Salvation Army volunteer to sort. That’s not a good reason to fail to donate but still, it is a concern for me. So what would you do?
I also would not buy used shoes. But, I can be a little anal so maybe other people do not have this problem? I have bought used clothes many times and just ran them through the washer before wearing but somehow my undies seems different. Please to advise.
I think you should cut the underwear into patches and make an underwear quilt. Then donate the quilt.
Also, on a completely unrelated matter, I would like to hear your, and perhaps Husband’s opinion on the correctness; grammatical, psychological and political of the following statement.
“Homosexual desire is abnormal.”
I ask this, because it is concerned with the erosion (or evolution) of language, and because it came up in a conversation I had, in the days following the recent Pride Parade.
Regards,
~I.
Underwear no, shoes yes. Unless they’re worn past the point of wearability, but that goes for everything. If you feel bad depriving poor people of affordable underwear (talk about abnormal desires!) you can always buy a big bag o’ undies from Walmart and donate them fresh.
Just FYI, and not making any judgments here… Salvation Army is a Christian church with an associated charity that does a lot of really good things, and states prosthelytizing above social goals in their mission statement. Meanwhile, something like, say, Big Brothers and Sisters of Canada or the Diabetes Association will come to your door to pick up old clothes, and are purely secular. I’m just saying.
http://www.salvationarmy.ca/missionandvalues/
If there is a grammatical problem I don’t see it – looks okay to me, sentence structure wise. What is incorrect?
Psychologically – You could call it abnormal from a statistical perspective, in that is is unusual and does not represent the majority status. It is not “abnormal” in the sense of pathological.
Politically, I am not sure how that would apply. It’s bad for your political career to say you’re tolerant or supportive of gay rights, but I wouldn’t say that makes those stances abnormal… just unpopular. Gays are also heavily discriminated against, legally and socially, so it’s a shitty minority status to happen to have, but again, that just makes it the target of unfair discrimination. The term abnormal doesn’t seem to apply.
True. I can’t get diabetic assoc pickups because I’m in an apartment and they said they don’t do that! But yeah… I don’t like the religious agenda of SA either, though they do do some good work. Maybe I’ll bring my stuff to a Big brothers or sisters bin.
Thing 1: I say donate the underpants, and let the charity decide whether or not they have a use for it.
Thing 2: There’s also a Wildlife Rescue thrift store on the corner of Davie and Granville that takes donations of clothes (but probably not undies). That’s where I got rid of my old stuff.
Thing 3: Can your fashionable friend come help me vet my wardrobe? I got halfway through a similar task, but made the mistake of not doing it all in one go. There’s a large pile of clothes sitting waiting for the rest that don’t make the cut to join them so I can get them all out of my house. It’s mocking me.
My advisor was Mel. I bet she’d be up for it. I would too, though I am not as fashionable… perhaps we could make it a three-way? So to speak.
Maybe I should host a “come and rag on my clothes” party. You, Mel, maybe Jennifer, a couple of bottles of wine and some Anton’s pasta.
Sounds awesome. Let’s do that. The ragging was pretty gentle though – mainly Mel just scrunched up her nose and shook her head.