I'm not sure if you are aware, but one of the many benefits of sharing our church with the Bear Church has been the arrival of their lovely cleaner, Celia. Together with Celia I have been sorting out and cleaning some of the darker corners of church. All the random unwanted items were gathered together in the Dorothy Christian room and - we had a mountain! Only part of it can be seen here, but it filled the room.

We sorted it out and transferred the majority of the mountain to the lobby, from whence it was taken away by a waste disposal contractor to be sorted and recycled wherever possible. The useful items we uncovered have been stored in their proper places. I am most grateful to Robin for the introduction to TipTapp, the waste removal app, without which this would have been a much more painful process. We can now see the rather nice floor of the Dorothy Christian room in its entirety, and more importantly, we can access the toilet roll drawer once again! 

We also cleared out some of the cupboards, though this is still a work-in-progress. It was sad going through the children's work supplies. The paper was all damp, the glue and paint was dried up, the costumes were mouldy. We need a fresh start, and I'll be looking for some grant funding to assist with this. With the catering and cleaning, our problem is more with disorganisation, as multiple teams and individuals have been working in different ways. We have duplication, as things were stored in different places. I had actually bought us new cutlery, as the cutlery drawer seemed quite empty, but I have since discovered multiple boxes of cutlery in other places and will have to give some away! We will consolidate, label and continue to enjoy sharing food and drink together over the years to come. 

I am now in the process of clearing out one of the lobby cupboards to give us the 'one true cleaning cupboard' with labelled supplies. This will free up space in the Ark cupboard, the kitchen and the Dorothy Christian room. I'm encouraging all church and hall users to keep to their allotted storage spaces so our church can be a welcoming space for the many different people who use it.

The cupboards in the DC room smell horribly of damp, and we need to find a solution to this. They are very well-made and just too airtight for their own good. We could drill some holes in the doors, or put panels of more permeable material in them. We will be removing some of the odder and more time-expired items from the cupboards and rationalising duplicate items, which will allow more space for air to circulate.

One of our few assets, as a church, is the fact that we sit on prime real estate. The Dorothy Christian room is a precious space. The Bear Church do have some shelving in there, which is temporary, but our long term vision for the room is as a welcoming space for smaller meetings and a quiet space for work. I have finally, after five years, managed to find shelf space for my own box of children's worship supplies, which has sat underneath a pew all this time. You may have heard me refer to the eleventh commandment:

Thou shalt put the top back on the glue.

To this I'd like to add a twelfth:

Thou shalt put a label on any box thou useth, detailing the contents. 

I'm hoping to move away from people feeling they have to take things home from church in order that they don't get lost, and buying items specially for events in case they can't find what they need. I've certainly done both of these things in the past, and I'm very grateful for the generosity of people in keeping the church supplied like this, but it should not be necessary in a well-organised space. We don't have much room for storage, so let's try and live lightly in our church and keep it beautiful for worship and community.