Polk County
Living
Polk County Itemizer-Observer • December 30, 2015 7A
Organization through donation
Donations help sustain employment programs
By Jolene Guzman
The Itemizer-Observer
DALLAS — While last
week it was last-minute pur-
chases, this week it was
down-to-the-wire donations
that kept Dallas’ Goodwill
busy.
Monday saw a steady
stream of cars lining up at
the stores donation center,
dropping off clothing, fur-
niture, electronics and
books. That flow will prob-
ably peak on New Year’s
Eve — Dec. 31, 2014, saw
250 donations — as people
want to sneak in another
tax deduction on their 2015
form.
“I think it’s important for
people to be able to take
that deduction for their gen-
erosity,” said Adina Shewfelt,
the Dallas Goodwill manag-
er.
For others, in addition to
seeing a small tax benefit, it
was the beginning of “out
with the old and in with the
new.”
JOLENE GUZMAN/Itemizer-Observer
Dallas resident Kevin Moen drops off donations at Goodwill on Monday.
If organizing your house
is on your to-do list for 2016,
making donations to area
thrift stores has the double
benefit of helping clear the
clutter and assisting others
in the community through
employment and job skills
programs.
“We give all the time,”
said Dallas resident Kevin
Moen as he dropped off a
few boxes of donations
Monday morning. “It’s local,
and we appreciate helping
out when and where we
can.”
He also noted that it is
good to part ways with some
possessions after receiving
gifts at Christmastime.
Shewfelt said the store
sees a lot of that.
“Then sometimes it’s
about cleaning out at the
end of the year,” she said
after one car drove away.
“They didn’t even want a re-
ceipt, but they came in at
the end of the year.”
The items people drop off
at the store don’t spend a lot
of time hiding in a back
room after they are donated.
Goodwill has a system of
sorting and pricing that has
sales floor-worthy items
ready for customers within
hours.
“ T h e y ’ v e t i m e d i t ,”
Shewfelt said. “They’ve
found it takes about six
hours.”
Items spend about four to
five weeks on the sales floor,
and if they don’t find a new
home, they go to salvagers
or are recycled.
Of the 197 million pounds
of donations taken in at
Goodwill stores in the Co-
lumbia Willamette region
(Central and Northwest Ore-
gon and Southwest Wash-
ington) in 2014, about 89
percent was sold, recycled or
salvaged.
Clothing is by far the most
donated item, but the sec-
ond most-item may be a
surprise: electronics.
Many people will use
Goodwill’s e-cycling pro-
gram, which takes all de-
vices, working or not.
“I’m just getting rid of un-
usable electronics,” said
Rose Bajorins, while hand-
ing off a couple boxes to
store employees.
She said she has an unfor-
tunately large supply of ob-
solete electronics and took
advantage of a chance to
unload a few on Monday.
By that time, there were
several people waiting to
give their unneeded items a
new life. Dallas store em-
ployees expect that will be
the case until 2016.
“They haven’t been lining
up yet,” Shewfelt said. “This
is the first day I’ve seen
them lining up.”
Tips for getting organized
Not sure how to attack the clutter monster in your house? Here’s a few tips to
restore order.
1. Start somewhere. Don’t get overwhelmed with the size of the
decluttering/organization project; break it up into manageable pieces. Pick an
overpopulated shelf, junk drawer, or messy counter as a starting place.
Another good idea: organize something that seems to be a daily headache. Is
your closet a bottomless pit? Does your cat make a bed of the clothes you had
set aside in the bottom of the closet to donate later? That’s where you should
start.
2. A successful decluttering effort takes time and dedication, but you don’t
have to rearrange your life to do it. Making time for 15 minutes each day is a
good start. Throw in a one- to two-hour session once or twice a week and you
will start seeing results.
3. Struggle deciding what do you keep and what do you throw away? Take
four boxes and label them: Put Away; Give Away/Sell; Storage; and
Recycle/Throw Away. Put items in boxes accordingly. This method forces you to
overcome indecision, which can be the source of junk accumulation.
4. Another method is clearing clutter from living areas in boxes or bags
and storing it to be dealt with later. The results are immediate: clutter-free
living areas.
5. Find “homes” for everyday objects, keys, backpacks, briefcases and
purses, mail awaiting sorting or recycling and important paperwork.
Life creates clutter, so if it must exist, give it boundaries. A kitchen junk
drawer can hide chaos within. Don’t have time to hang up or fold your
clothes properly? Throw them in one corner or one piece of furniture in
your bedroom and nowhere else.
6. Establish good habits and routines. For example, returning home
(put your keys, coat and bags in the same place each time) or mail sorting
(throw away junk immediately, put bills in their proper place).
7. Finally, want to do some extreme decluttering? Try the one in, one out
rule, meaning for everything you bring home, a similar item has to go. It’s
a shirt for a shirt or pair of shoes for a pair shoes. Perhaps not for the sen-
timentalist, but still an effective strategy. Also, it could prevent those im-
pulse buys.
Source: http://organizedhome.com/.
Mission accomplished (almost)
I can’t remember having willingly put my-
self in such physical pain for so long as I did
on Nov. 8, 2015.
If joints, muscles and lungs could scream,
they would have been howling.
I was at
mile 11 of a
OLENE
h a l f
marathon
UZMAN (13.1 miles)
— and not a
road race
Commentary
h a l f
m a ra t h o n ,
but a steep, hilly, muddy, slippery trail run at
Silver Falls State Park. It’s safe to say the
course is daunting.
And just for fun, there’s a short but steep
hill with less than a mile to go. I was hating
the climb, but looking forward to the down-
hill side to make up time. Well, the descent
was a slick mess that required treading with
care — or better yet, skies.
So much for making up time, but at the
bottom, there was maybe a quarter of a mile
of green grass and a bridge between me and
the finish line.
I picked up my aching knees and took it
home. New Year’s resolution met.
Almost.
At the beginning of the year, along with
the usual goals of reading more and hoard-
ing less (those didn’t work, by the way), I
gave myself a specific goal: run 10 races.
I trained and signed up for several local
runs of varying distances from 3K to 10K.
OK, so “several” is not 10, but after an ex-
change in the I-O newsroom last spring, I al-
lowed my goal to shift.
J
G
As usual when it comes to news staff chal-
lenges, it was reporter Emily Mentzer who
suggested it. Already a half-marathon finish-
er, she wanted to take on the course at Silver
Falls. She asked if I wanted to join her.
I only took a few seconds to think about
before saying “yes.”
In hindsight, I think that was the motiva-
tion I was looking for to take on a “go big or
go home” challenge.
From that point on, the rest of my races
were training milestones. I became a regular
on the perimeter trail at Bush Park in Salem,
running an increasing number of miles as
one season drifted into another.
Still in the back of my mind I thought, can
I really do this?
On a warm night in mid-October, I found
my answer after running my longest training
run of 10.5 miles. It felt good, like I could run
longer.
It turns out 10.5 miles wasn’t quite enough
to prepare me for this course, thus the mile
11 joint, muscle and lung “collapse.”
But at that point, after months of training
— miles of running in the heat, cold, rain
and at times when I should have been doing
something else — quitting was not an op-
tion.
I didn’t.
Instead, I turned doubt into an accom-
plishment that I will be proud of the rest of
my life.
As for those 10 races, there’s always 2016.
P.S. Emily and I beat our time goals, de-
spite the elevation and crazy steep hills at
Silver Falls. We are going to do it again in
2016. This time Sports Editor Lukas Eggen
should join us (yes, that is a challenge).
JEFF MENTZER/for the Itemizer-Observer
Jolene Guzman, left, and Emily Mentzer were all smiles at the Silver Falls Half-Marathon.