Keep
Clean, whole and ready for another child. It goes on the shelf in its size band and a credit goes on your swap number.
What we take
What we take, what we don't, and the hand-knits
Every bag is opened by hand on the sorting room table. This is the standard it's held to, and the reasons behind each rule.
Size bands, and what each one is short of
Newborn to age 12, in two year bands above age 2
- 56
Newborn
Sleepsuits, cardigans, soft hats
- 68
Up to 6 months
Sleepsuits, pramsuits, soft trousers
- 80
6 to 12 months
Snowsuits and all-in-ones
- 92
1 to 2 years
Puddle suits, warm trousers
- 104
2 to 4 years
Rain jackets, leggings, fleeces
- 116
4 to 6 years
Coats, plain school trousers
- 128
6 to 8 years
Plain uniform, Communion outfits in season
- 140
8 to 10 years
Jeans, winter coats, hoodies
- 152
10 to 12 years
Anything a twelve year old will agree to wear
On the table
Keep, mend or rest
Every item in every bag goes onto one of three piles.
Mend
A loose button or a dropped hem, which the sorting room fixes itself. Mended items are credited like any other.
Rest
Past passing on. Back to you for €4, or to a textile bank in the city for nothing.
Knitwear
Hand-knits, and why we fuss over them
There is a particular kind of cardigan that only a grandmother makes. Thick, a little long in the sleeve, with the buttons sewn on twice. We see them come back through the sorting room on their third child, sometimes their fourth, with the cuffs still holding their shape, and every time one lands on the table somebody stops what they're doing to have a look at it.
So we fuss. A hand-knit never goes in with the rest of a bag's wash. It gets the wool cycle, cold and on its own, with a capful of wool wash and no softener, and then it dries flat on the rack by the window, turned once at lunchtime. We never hang a knit. A wet jumper on a hanger is a dress by Thursday, and the shoulders never forgive you.
That care is why a hand-knit counts as two items when it comes in. It takes twice the minding of a shop jumper and lasts three times as long, and it seems only fair that the family who sent it gets the credit for that. If someone in your house knitted it, tell us in your note. We like to know where a cardigan came from, even if all we can pass on to the next family is that somebody made it.
Mittens are their own story. They arrive one at a time far more often than in pairs, so single mittens go on the sorting room radiator to wait. Most are matched inside a month, when the other one turns up at the bottom of a sibling's bag, or a note arrives saying it was found behind the press. The radiator fills up every November and empties slowly through the spring.
The record is a red mitten, a small one in double knit with a white snowflake on the back, that waited fourteen months. Its pair came in a different family's bag, from a cousin it had been lent to, folded inside a cardigan. We sat the two of them together on the shelf for a day before they went out again, which is not sorting room policy, only what happened.
Siobhán
The other pile
What we won't take
Some of these are about safety, some about hygiene and some about what survives a week in a post sack. None of them are negotiable, however new the item.
-
However new. Shoes shape themselves to the feet that wore them, and the rest is too close to the skin to pass between families by post.
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Car seats, cots, prams, cot bumpers, baby slings and anything else where safety depends on its history. We can't know where a thing like that has been, so we don't guess.
-
Plain uniform is very welcome: grey trousers, pinafores, polo shirts, plain jumpers. Anything carrying a crest or a school's name is better passed on at that school's gate.
-
Cloaks, capes and animal ears are welcome all year. Anything that lights up, flashes or plays a tune is not.
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And bags that arrive smelling of a shed. One damp item turns a whole bag on the way here, so let everything dry right through to the seams before it goes in.
-
Our sizes stop at age 12, or 152 cm. Anything bigger goes back for €4 or to the textile bank, whichever your note asks for.
Before you seal the bag
A good bag, ticked off
Washed
On the care label's setting, with nothing strongly scented.
Dry
Right through to the seams and the cuffs.
Folded
Flat, not rolled, so it arrives the way it left.
Pockets emptied
Conkers, tissues and hair bobbins all turn up in here.
Note inside
Your swap number on paper, on top of the pile.
Next
Bag packed? Write first for your swap number and the posting details.
The swap fee, postage and turnaround are all set out on How it works.