I’ve written before how the website/subscription service Fly Lady helps me to keep my house in order (somewhat), and today I realized how much Fly Lady helps me to stay green. One of her “surprise challenges” was to identify clutter in my home that could “bless” someone else. That is, stuff my family no longer needs, uses or wants and which we could donate to someone else. This is usually a no brainer for me, because I already donate clothes to a local charity when I can’t sell them on eBay.

However, today Fly Lady threw a little twist into the challenge. She suggested that we find three different places that would benefit from my giveaways. Let me tell you, that was not a no brainer. I knew I had stuff I wanted to give away but give away to three different places. How was I going to manage that? Eventually, I figured out how I could fulfill the challenge without throwing anything away, and having just returned from donating items to two of the three places, I thought you might benefit from this challenge as well.

First, last week I cleaned out my linen closet. As I’ve written before here and on Green Boot Camp, I did what I usually do when I find myself with old towels–I turned them into rags. But truth be told, old sheets don’t make great cleaning rags, and I had a bunch I wasn’t sure what to do with. Then I discovered that my local SPCA will take old blankets, sheets and towels, which they can use to make soft bedding for the dogs and cats waiting to be adopted. They’ll take towels, too, which they use after bathing animals. I grabbed two old shopping bags, filled them with my sheets that had seen better days, and this afternoon I drove over to the SPCA to fulfill one of my three giveaways. (I also popped in to see the dogs, not that I’m in the market to adopt another one, but they are just so cute I couldn’t help myself.)

Next, it’s been more than a year since I called The Purple Heart to come to my house to take away donations I can’t giveaway elsewhere. These include old books, which my library used to take but doesn’t have the room for anymore, furniture and clothing. I scheduled a pick up for two Mondays from now, and while, technically I didn’t give anything away today, I feel like I’ve fulfilled the second of my three giveaways.

It was on the third giveaway that I really got stuck, but then I looked around and noticed how many piles of old newspapers and magazines I had lying around. Sure, recycling is this Friday, and I could put them out then, but why not benefit a good cause with my recycling? So I bunched up the newspapers and magazines, and drove them to the Paper Retriever bin over at my daughter’s school. As I’ve written about before, this program from Abitibi allows schools to collect recycling (paper only) as part of their fund-raising efforts–the schools get money back from Abitibi based on how many tons of paper people recycle.

Do you have clutter sitting around that you can give away to three different sources? Can you do it in a green and philanthropic way, so that you’re keeping items out of the trash and benefiting a good cause at the same time? I’d love to hear how you might fulfill this kind of challenge like I did today.