Last night we blitzed the tidying and organising tasks at the Oxford Mutual Aid food bank. As a 7-days-a-week operation there's rarely time to pause and take stock due to the overwhelming need to get the food parcels prepared, so a GoodGym flash-mob every now and then helps to get everything back in order.

This week there have been lots of large donations in from other food banks and larders which needed sorting into crates of similar items then stored properly. Also, now that we're into the New Year all the leftover Christmas items needed to be organised so that they can be stored off site instead of taking up precious space in the hall.

We divided into teams and got to work:
* Lorenzo headed up a group sorting through all the recent food donations, crating them up with like-items and stacking them away in a more organised fashion.
* Rachael took her team to the kitchen to sort through the fresh fruit and veg and dispose of any that were too mushy/mouldy to send out, organising the fridges into expiry-date order, and giving the whole area a good clean, before moving on to portioning up bulk bags of pasta.
* Bethan's crew sorted through mountains of Christmas gifts, categorising by age of recipient, and then picking a few crates to remain at the hall as birthday gifts and labelling everything else up for off-site storage.
* Holly, Vicky and Ben did the heavy lifting, re-organising the tin-can corner to make more storage space. Hope your arm muscles aren't too achey this morning!
* Last, but not least, Dan tackled cardboard mountain, flattening the pile of boxes and crushing as many as possible into the recycling bin.

We've already had effusive thanks from the Oxford Mutual Aid organising team:

"This is is so, so helpful! Thank you thank you!"
"Thank you SO SO MUCH"
"I've just been in and everything looks like a dream."

Great work team. Well done!