Member-only story
Shocker! Your Used Stuff Won’t Land You On Antiques Roadshow
Once you give it away, it is gone … it may help if you think of donating as recycling …
Our family survived Hurricane Ian and our house did, too.
In the wake of the hurricane, a local resident wrote on one of our community social media message boards: “I want to donate clothing but not to Goodwill where they will sell it.”
Another local recommended a church clothing closet, but they can’t take donations right now because the building that held their clothing was destroyed by the hurricane.
I also saw a note from another church that said, “Please don’t donate any more cans or MREs (meals ready to eat), we are full and can’t give them away fast enough.”
If you’re not here in Southwest Florida, you can’t really understand the scope and scale of devastation. It will take at least a year, probably more, for all of the debris to be cleared and for everything that needs to be rebuilt, to be rebuilt: maybe longer. Communities like Fort Myers Beach will never be the same. The storm literally remade every barrier island. Without question, anything new that is built will be built to withstand massive storm surge and 150+ mph/260+ kph winds.
