12 months of giving Archives | Kuball's Khaos

12 Months of Giving: Simple Ways Busy Families Can Help Others

Lyn — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 15:00:00 +0000

INSIDE: Discover 12 simple, meaningful ways to give back to those in need all year long. Easy monthly ideas for families, kids, and busy lives. Several years ago I started something I thought was going to be AMAZING! 2 months in…..everyone’s world collapsed. We were separated by at least 6 feet, 15 minutes, and GOD help you if you had a cough. COVID is still around but we are so much more knowledgeable about how to treat this thing. Disclosure Statement: The links in this post contain affiliate links and I will receive a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on my link. Those funds help keep this site alive and kickin’ but it doesn’t cost YOU a thing! Click here for the full disclosure. Anyway, my idea was 12 months of giving. Clean out your house and give to those in need. Turns out everyone did that because that was all some of us had TO do. Goodwill stores were overflowing, animal shelters were empty. Which is amazing but the ones of us still working were so exhausted we couldn’t find time to do any of these things. SO my proposal is this – try it again. Healthcare workers, grocery store clerks, gas station attendants, groomers, bankers, and lets not forget our liquor store workers. Y’all kept me sane through all this. BUT now I challenge you to clean out your closets, pantries, cabinets, and donate to the folks that need it. Don’t forget to share the social love – Come follow us on Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok and Insta. AND now on YouTube!!! Here is the original post – 12 months of giving. I don’t want to re-create the wheel here, so I’m just going to keep it similar, change somethings cause…well time changed some things. This will be our outline – Some of these things have changed for various reasons. BUT we will stick to the main idea of each of these months. January, April and November – Food Using the Food Pantries website, you can find any state and city you want. There are nationwide food banks that have local chapter or online donation options, such as Feeding America, Meals on Wheels, World Central Kitchen, and No Kid Hungry. February and August- Clothing This website can help you find local and nationwide donations centers – Money Crashers. A few of my favorites are One Warm Coat, Soles4souls, and your local homeless shelters. March – Towels This is not rocket science. Old towels – thin? rips? too many? not your style anymore? Give them away. Who would want old towels? Lots of people. My personal favorite is animal shelters. Want to find a No Kill Shelter to donate to – check out Best Friends to find one near you. Another place that will take your towels is homeless shelters. Not sure where those are near you. No problem – HUD (U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development) can help you find one. April – Books Believe it or not there are SOOOO many places to donate books. No book is to small or too great. May and December – Toys Dust gathering on those “I have to have this” toys? Me either….I was asking for a friend. Twice a year, we go through our toys, decide what we still play with and donate the rest. I am always impressed by what the kids are willing to part with. Some of our favorite places to donate: June – Kitchen items Think dishes, silverware, small appliances, pots and pans. We aren’t going repeat the same charitable donation option with each month of giving because the same places accept all donations. Salvation Army, Habitat Restores, Goodwill and local non-profits. For this one we will add Furniture Bank Network. I don’t have one near me, but maybe you do. If you don’t, stick to the normal places. July – personal hygiene items Do you have 35 scents of lotion from Bath and Body that you will never wear again? Shampoo that made your hair frizzy? Me too……so I take all of these things to my local shelter. September – Home Decor Pictures, lamps, pillows….you know the stuff. Again, Habitat Restores, Salvation Army, and Goodwill will take these items. However, we have a local organization that helps people find low income housing and, many times, keeps them out of the shelter or from being homeless. It is called ECHO – Eastern Carolina Housing Organization. I donate my home goods to them, as they give the items to people who literally have nothing. There are pick up donation sites that might be available to you as well. Here is a reputable website that is available in large cities. October – Blankets and Jackets In some places it starts getting cold around October. I live in the south…..ummmm….we call our weather waffling. It will be 35 degrees one day and the next 75…..so while we may not need warm jackets for 6 months, we need them sometimes. Therefore, our jackets are gently used. One Warm Coat is an amazing organization that partners with retailers all over the country to get the donated items to those in need. I would like to give a special nod to another organization that does amazing things for the communities it calls home. MOD Pizza. If you don’t have one, I’m sorry. These folks actually host a coat drive for kids and give the “reward” to the child donating the jacket. And of course the usual places apply here. When giving blankets, think about the people who need them most. Homeless or unhoused people, depending on who you talk to. Donating these to homeless and/or domestic violence shelters are where you can make the biggest impact. Another idea is animal shelters. Some types of comforters or filled blankets should NOT be given to animal shelters. As you can imagine, stuffing that is eaten must come out……I’ll leave that there. OK, let’s get this thing started…..FIRST put Christmas away. Start somewhere,

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February – Clothing Donation Month

Lyn — Sat, 08 Feb 2020 13:52:00 +0000

Disclosure Statement: The links in this post contain affiliate links and I will receive a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on my link. Click here for the full disclosure. February is a month for love….and practicing kindness is part of that love. During our 12 months of giving challenge, we take something in our own home and donate it to our community. February is clothing donation month. A way to declutter AND help others….who wouldn’t want to do that? Show of hands?? For February, we are going to focus on clothing. I suggest setting aside several days for this adventure. Whether you tackle a little each day or spend an entire day doing it, we all need to clean out our closets and dressers. Where do we start: Make a list of rooms and clothing storage units: Hubby closet and dresser My closet and dresser Oldest dresser Youngest dresser Some of these tasks are going to require a lot of work. Rules of engagement: You can use the KonMari method, if you want. But clothing doesn’t spark my joy….so these are my questions – Does it fit? Do I like the way it looks on me? Will I wear it? If any of these questions has a “NO” answer, GONE! Purging is the most important part of the process – and it feels really great to have a fresh start. We decided to take each dresser drawer by drawer, one day at a time, in reverse order from the list. Youngest child’s dresser: Top drawer: Undies, socks, bathing suits, and gymnastics leotards. Well, score one for Mom cause the leos are too small but I know just the kiddo that can use them! I don’t know how you feel about this….but I don’t think underwear is a donate-able item? Is it? I didn’t take pictures of this drawer….privacy is very important!!!! Second drawer: Jammies. This was just a matter of size and does she wear it. Third drawer: Shirts. We figured out what fit, what she would wear, and then separated by types of shirts. Long sleeves, short sleeves, and school/camp shirts. Fourth drawer: Pants. Really, it was separate pants and shorts. Last drawer: Dresses. Summer, winter, and fancy dresses. Well, not too many fit anymore. 😥 AND we found some sweatshirt in there! Middle child’s dresser: This one is a little easier because she just went through a growth spurt and we had to determine what she had after everything looked like she was waiting for a flood. Needless to say, she does not have an overabundance of clothing right now. In fact, it wasn’t even worth going through it. Oldest child’s dresser and closet: My son has already completed his task and ended up with a 30 gallon trash bag FULL! I didn’t even have time to take before pictures. Since the kids did such an amazing job during their February clothing donation challenge, Mom and Dad had to hold up their end of the bargain. Hubby’s dresser and closet Since the master closet makeover, my husband and I have kept up with our closets fairly well. So the purge in here was pretty limited. UNTIL……..I went to his dresser…………………………………………………………………………. Ummmmmmmmm…………………….I love him. I really do. I’m going to show you the before pictures – there is nothing to say…. Top drawer: I do NOT know why ONE person would need all of these socks…..but he claims he does. Dress socks for work, white socks for sneakers, and warm socks for cold weather. Second drawer: Home to the white t’s and…underwear? I guess when you have an entire drawer FULL of socks you can’t make room for underwear in there…so the next best place is the next drawer – with your white t-shirts….whatever works for the user! No picture….again privacy issues….. Third drawer: This is where the greatest purge took place. Many of these shirts haven’t been worn in years….I removed them and refolded the rest. Fourth drawer: The comfy drawer! I found 3 pairs of pants BEHIND this drawer. Do you know what this tells me? Things were stuffed so tight in there the pants started running away! HAHAHA! Bottom drawer: I couldn’t open this drawer when I started. Of course, when I removed the runaway pants from the above drawer, I was able to move it a little. I literally had to remove 5 pairs of shorts to open the drawer. My dresser and closet Since I had done this about a year ago, my dresser and closet were not in need of a complete overhaul….like some people. But some drawers needed attention – Jammie drawer I have a TON of comfortable pants that I don’t wear. Time to give them away. YES, I still have a t-shirt from my high school softball team! Shirt drawer I have accumulated several shirts this year…therefore I must get rid of some. Closet This was pretty easy because it was mainly my shoes and of course my Thirty One collection that needed organizing. I got rid of 4 pairs of shoes. And decided that my Thirty One Collection isn’t that bad this time! PHEW! This concludes our February Clothing Donation Month for our 12 months of Giving Challenge. Did you miss last months giving challenge? Check it out here! Happy Donating,

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January – Food Donation Month

Lyn — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 23:30:00 +0000

Disclosure Statement: The links in this post contain affiliate links and I will receive a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on my link. Click here for the full disclosure. During our 2020 challenge of 12 months of giving, January is food donation month. So let’s get started with what we have in our kitchen to donate. Not everyone has the same spaces in their kitchen, but I’m going to cover them all. If you have questions about what else is on our list of 12 months of Giving, check out this post. Where to start: Pantry Generally pantries hold dry goods. So let’s start there – Remove extra boxes of rice, cereal, pasta, and lentils (beans, grains etc) Do you have extra crackers you aren’t going to eat? Costco trip gone awry? There is no point in holding on to something you won’t eat just because you bought it. If it will expire before you will eat it, its FOOD WASTE! I don’t see the sense in that. If you want to see what I did in my pantry, check it out here. Lazy Susan If you have one of these, it’s a great place to store your canned goods. Did you buy 4 cans of cream of mushroom soup for Thanksgiving? Will you use them before they expire? Gravy? Pie making supplies – evaporated milk, pumpkin, pie filling….etc Canned veggies, again, Costco trip that didn’t work out like you thought? I tend to hang on to things I THINK I’m going to use…and then they expire before I get around to it. WHY???? I use pumpkin ONCE a year….Let it go! Baking Supplies The key to knowing what you have is cleaning out and reorganizing the place you keep the goods! Check out how we made over our baking cabinet. Will you use 4 cans of frosting you bought for gingerbread houses? Do you need 3 kinds of cake mix? Too many containers of salt? Cold goods Shelters and food banks generally shy away from perishable items. This is due to limited space to store it and the liability that you didn’t keep it cold while it was at your house…..so if you have these things to donate, call the place you are donating ahead of time. However, if you find a place that will take these items, check out this post to see how to organize your fridge. What to put your goods in There are several options, do NOT buy anything special. Just use what you have. Especially because it was just a holiday….I know y’all have Amazon boxes still!!! Plastic bins Cardboard boxes (like Amazon) Bankers boxes Where to donate Check out Food Pantries for a list of donation sites in your area. I donate to our local community kitchen. They supply afterschool snacks to 3 area programs, dinners to high risk teens living at a shelter near by, and it is all FREE of charge to the people it serves. I wish I could do more…….but here is my box. Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?? Stay tuned for more donation challenges. Thanks for completing the January food donation challenge. Happy Giving,

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