Random Acts of Kindness

I love this time of year, it really brings home the things I deem as important. My faith in God, my family and practicing charity throughout the year.

I never throw away anything usable, I always always always donate it to charity. There are many charitable organizations around if you let your fingers do the walking through the yellow pages.

Just when I thought that I have gone through everything, I've found that I have MORE to give. As my husband and I are putting ornaments on the tree, I'm looking through all of the boxes of ornaments...thinking at times out loud but mostly to myself- "we can donate that". The ornaments displayed on our Christmas tree are mostly from places we have been, so the Disney Character ornaments can go, as a matter of fact the kids won't even let us put them on the tree any more. So I'm making a substantial donation of Christmas ornaments and decorations to our local women's shelter. I'm sure that the children will be delighted to see their favorite Disney characters on their Christmas tree.

The other things we participate in is Angel Tree gifts- we started that with our children. It's an awesome way to show your kids acts of kindness when they are small- it stays with them. Every year since Andrew has been 6 years old, he's come home with an Angel Tree gift tag -that boy of ours has a heart of gold! He personally picks out a gift and he spends his own money on it too!

Both of our children are involved in Food Drives. The local school district has a food drive this time of year... which reminds me, I need to pick up a few 6 packs of green beans and corn for the kids to take to school tomorrow. I love how my children become involved in programs like this- it makes me proud! It saddens me to think that there are children in our own local community that have nothing to eat.

Clothing and Coats Drives- Andrew is involved in this through the AFJROTC, last year he brought in the most clothes (with help from his mom of course). The coat drive did very well this year, past years found the program struggling. Since the end of the last clothing drive we've been saving all of the clothes that the kids have been grown out of, I like to think of it like this...I'm recycling these clothes to give them a chance to have new users. Shoes are often something that is overlooked. If they're in good usable condition, I clean them up, put new shoe laces in them and donate them.

So I've been going through my own closet and I'm looking at shoes and purses...ones that I haven't used in a while are being donated. There's no need for me to hang on to this stuff if I'm not using it. I just sent a package to my Mom who is on a tight fixed income, I made her day when she discovered that I sent her a Dooney & Bourke handbag. My thought is, if I'm not using it why not let my mom have the pleasure of using it. I have a another handbag that I'm going to send to her, I plan on doing that closer to Valentines Day.

Here's my thought of the day/week/month...

Think of the things that you have in your home that you're not using and what joy it could bring to someone else.

Start something new...Practice Random Acts of Kindness. It seems as if I'm always making up a goody box of some sort and sending it off to a friend. You can do this too!