A Clothing Sale

This is actually a repost from about three years ago.  My son has long ago left his daycare, but I stay in touch with the childcare center director and she said it's still going strong, I've left a "legacy".


My mom was a wonderful PTA parent and organizer.  I was quite active in high school and even college in managing organizations and events.  In this season of my life, I have no interest.  I am already feeling stretched and overwhelmed.  My family comes first over organizations in my over-scheduled schedule.

While my son's daycare is a WONDERFUL place, they require these things called "co-op hours".  That means every month you need to put in at least 3 hours of volunteering.  My husband and I have done laundry, sold Christmas ornaments and cleaned toys to fulfill these hours.  I even have gone to watch infants for a couple hours (not really a chore, but hard to schedule).  Part of me doesn't understand how we pay the equivalent of a college education for childcare + are required to do volunteer hours.

Last month, we got a notice that somehow, we were still behind in the number of hours.  Both my husband and I are fairly proficient at math, so we couldn't figure out how we could be 6 hours behind, when we thought we were ahead.

We couldn't remember the exact punishment for falling behind on hours, but we were pretty sure it involved fines and possibly losing a spot in the daycare.

I tried to think fast of how I could come up with some volunteer hours.  Meanwhile, it's spring cleaning time and I'm trying to organize things and clean out the house.  I had previously talked with the center's director about a clothing/toy sale for kids to swap their clothes and toys for the next size up.  I e-mailed her the idea and she said, sure, go ahead, and why don't you do it 3 weeks from now?

I have now learned how to conference call (not much opportunity to do that in veterinary medicine).  I've also remembered the joys of flyers and e-mail promotion and found out many other things particular to my son's daycare.  Those days of organizing dog washes, blood drives and more are coming back to me.

Hopefully we will get plenty of toys and clothing and gear.  Hopefully, parents won't have have to buy brand new snowsuits next year and can save a little money and we can also clean out our closets.  The proceeds of the sale are going to go back to the school for enrichment activities and any leftover gear and clothing will be donated to a local pregnancy center.  I will let you know next week how it all goes.  Fortunately, there are other parents who also found they were behind on hours.  So, I have a fair number of volunteers who want to put AS MUCH time as possible into this.  Oh, and as an update.  My husband and my math skills are still fine, we had the person re-audit our hours and we were 5.5 hours ahead.  So add on this experience and we should hopefully be able to at least cruise through summer : )