Old clothes and great conversations

Hanging up dresses with my eldest son
and his friend at Thrift Shop a couple
of years ago.

Thrift Shop preparation has begun. The giant biannual CAJ garage sale that takes up the whole school gym and requires 2 1/2 days and hundreds of volunteer hours to put together, but raises a large amount of money. The one in April this year brought in about AU$40,500. That is no small amount!

I've said it before, actually here, that one of the best things about volunteering during the Thrift Shop set-up time is the conversations that you have.

Today I had many conversations, but one theme came through in at least two, and that was related to men doing work around the home and teaching boys to do the same.

One conversation stands out, it was with a lady who I don't know, but who knows me as the wife of the teacher of a couple of her kids. She knows my husband only in that role: as a maths/science teacher. We were working after school was out and she was very surprised to hear that my husband had pulled the washing in when he got home (it began raining as he walked home). She said her husband would never think of such a thing and I had a sterling opportunity to sing my husband's praises. In fact, as I type, he's ironing clothes (not that he does that often, but he does do it).

I could write a whole lot about this topic. About how when David and I got together, I just expected that David would help out at home and encouraged him in this, but that all the ground-work had already been done in that his mother had taught him a lot as well as the fact that he'd had to take care of his own place for a few years before I came along. And then the moulding effect that language school had on our marriage, in that we both had to look after our kids and the house and pull together or we wouldn't have made it through . . .

I could also write about how I'm now teaching my boys to take care of a home (looking for future mother-in-law brownie points) . . .

But I've run out of time in my day. With another whole day of old-stuff sorting and then a further day of helping out at the actual sale, I need to make sure I get to bed at a reasonable time.