Leftover Donations: Making the Most of Our Blessings

It's been a busy couple of weeks since the yard sale!! I've been returning borrowed tables and canopies and itemizing leftover donations. Because of our seriously generous friends who donated items for our sale, we had a TON of donations leftover, which I felt compelled/responsible/called to donate to organizations that are important to us and to ensure that we receive the tax deductions on our tax return. Our friends donated their items to us, giving up their own tax deductions, hoping it would help us adopt our baby, so I want as much of the donations going towards our adoption as possible. Tax savings = more money to adopt our baby!!

I spent a lot of time thoughtfully and prayerfully considering which non-profits our donations would go to, and in the process, I learned more about these wonderful organizations in our community! I feel so grateful that I was able to contribute to them! Read on to learn about the places who received all of our leftover donations and their important missions. Much more important than emptying my garage so I can park in it this winter, but that is a huge plus. :)

The Salvation Army is great because it's a Christian organization and they donate the items they can't sell to people who need them, rather than just throwing them away, like other organizations do. They received our furniture, household, and kitchen items.
>>>Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/pg/RiverValleyARC/about/?ref=page_internal.

Lakota Journey is an important mission we support at Cross Point Church. A group of ladies drove over to the Indian reservation in South Dakota recently to visit them and provide new coats and gently used clothing for the people this ministry serves, so I pulled some coats and cute/warm winter clothes out of our leftover donations for them to stuff in their mini van (pictured below).
>>>Check them out at https://www.lakotajourney.org/purpose.

Pregnancy Resources is an organization in Davenport that provides free resources to moms and dads to help them when they don't have what they need to raise their child. They provide so many different resources, including parenting training, diapers, and free ultrasounds! We donated baby items, stuffed animals, and clothes for ages 0-3T to them.
>>>Check them out at https://qcpregnancy.org/
or https://www.facebook.com/pg/PRQuadCities/about/?ref=page_internal.
>>>More info about the services they provide in this interview (both clips are very informative!!!): https://wqad.com/2019/02/12/coffee-break-how-pregnancy-resources-supports-the-qc-community/.

Life's Little Treasures is a thrift store with lots of cute stuff of all kinds on Brady St in Davenport which donates all proceeds to QC Right to Life. They received our kids' clothes and toys for ages 4T+ and some framed art. I bought my cute little "Welcome" pot holder for my front porch there!
>>>Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/pg/LifesLittleTreasuresResaleShop/about/?ref=page_internal

Closet 2 Closet is an organization in Rock Island that was built, in part, through the adoption of preteen foster children. They offer, free of charge, all-season clothing, accessories, and hygiene items exclusively for foster teens. They will be receiving our adult clothes, shoes, and bags from our leftover donations after I deliver them tomorrow (and then my garage will finally be empty!!). 
>>>Check them out at http://www.closet2closet.org/about.php
or https://www.facebook.com/QCCloset2Closet/.

Dress For Success is another awesome organization that provides professional work clothes and guidance to help women get jobs and support themselves. They received some very nice dresses, blazers, and dress shoes out of our leftover donations.
>>>Check them out at https://quadcities.dressforsuccess.org/about-us/
or https://www.facebook.com/pg/dfsqc/about/?ref=page_internal

Bettendorf Public Library is where my stepsons spent a lot of time after school before they got licenses and vehicles, so they received 10 boxes of books! Note: books are generally not deductible on your tax return, but a library is always a good cause! Another good cause is the Rock Island County Jail. A lady from work is collecting paperback books for a Christian ministry that supports this jail, so I pulled out 2 boxes of paperbacks to give her! Note: I did let my stepdad Dan who owns The Source Books used bookstore in downtown Davenport have first dibs on what he can sell at his store. This picture is what was left AFTER he picked out what he wanted!! We had TONS of books!! I built up some serious ab muscles hauling these boxes around, haha!

We also set aside several higher value donations that we thought would sell better online, so we're still working on getting prices set and pictures taken and loaded online. Expect to see lots of Facebook Marketplace posts from me soon! Planning to start on that next week! We're getting closer to bringing our baby home!!

Tips on Donations to Multiple Charities

1. If you have the time and desire, consider donating your leftover items to multiple nonprofit charities that are important to you or you know have the greatest needs. Google has a wealth of information as well as Facebook. It feels awesome when you can spread the love!
2. When boxing up leftovers from your garage sale, decide which types of items are going to which charity and write on top of the box which charity the items go to. Be sure to set boxes going to the same charity in the same spot and keep them separate from the boxes for other charities. This will make it helpful for when you are ready to itemize (write down the types of items and the number of each type) and then drop off donations.
3. Be sure to itemize the donations for your tax return at home or take pictures of the items to itemize later. There is often not enough time to itemize when you're at the site of donation.
4. Be sure to ask for a receipt for your donations just in case you were to ever get audited by the IRS someday. Keep your itemized list attached to your receipt in your taxes folder.
5. The highest value items for tax deductions would be clothing, shoes, bags, coats, bedding, rugs, lamps, TV's, and furniture. Books are not tax-deductible with a few exceptions, so be sure to do your research. Here are some tips on valuing donations:  https://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/valuation-guide-for-donated-goods.aspx  https://satruck.org/Home/DonationValueGuide
6. Turbo Tax has an online tool that helps you value and keep track of your donations throughout the year to make it easier to file your tax return: https://itsdeductibleonline.intuit.com/
7. After you've itemized the items in a box, place a yard sale sticker on the side (or some kind of sticker) so you'll know if you've already gone through the box. I went through my boxes in my living room over a couple of weeks while watching Grey's Anatomy. Highly recommend! Hehe

Our Yard Sale Success!!

You guys...God provided for us in a huge way...we raised $2900 this past weekend on our yard sale and bake sale!! Amazing!!! We are so, so grateful!! We could not have done any of it without our amazing volunteers who worked their butts off, friends who donated items, and friends who loaned us tables and canopies!!! It was SO MUCH work, but wonderful to know it was all worth it! We felt very loved and encouraged that so many could help us bring our baby home.

Speaking of our friends who donated items...we FILLED a 26 foot U-Haul with donations from over 15 families!! Thank goodness we had just enough tables!! We sold about 2/3 of the donations, even though it started storming around 2pm on Saturday. The canopies seriously came in handy! They gave us time to get the donations inside so they weren't ruined. Friday was our biggest day, but we still made about $800 on Saturday! We made another $100 on Sunday selling leftover baked goods items at church...wonderful idea and so sweet of our friends to coordinate! We were too exhausted to go anywhere Sunday except to return the U-Haul, haha! Speaking of which...a kind soul paid for half of our truck rental!! We really felt God's presence and love throughout the whole weekend! We are truly blessed :)

We decided not to do another sale since we don't have space to store leftover donations until Spring, so we decided to donate the leftovers. We decided to split them between Salvation Army (household items and furniture), Pregnancy Resources - a local nonprofit that provides resources to people who decide to parent but can't afford it (kids clothes, toys, and baby items), and Closet 2 Closet - a local non-profit who provides clothes for teenage foster kids (adult clothes and bags). We will keep receipts for our tax return of course. :) We also held back several high value items to sell online for the adoption fund, so we will likely have even more sales coming! Will keep ya'll posted on the grand total!

What's next: 1) finish itemizing receipts and running donations to charities 2) sell leftover donations online 3) get our house decluttered and cleaned up 4) start our home study (which we can afford now, YAY!!!)  5) start our next fundraiser to raise the rest of our $5000 goal so we can hire our Christian Adoption Consultant, apply for grants, and start applying for birth mom situations!

We talked to a lady at our sale who works at the Davenport Knights of Columbus, and she gave us a great idea: host a trivia night fundraiser! She thinks we could get a discount on the space, so we're going to look into that next! That would be so much fun and hopefully less work for our friends and family. :) Check out all these donations we had!! It was wonderful how kind and generous most people were. It was exhausting, but at the end of the weekend, our hearts were overflowing.

  

 

Yard Sale Week!!

Get excited!! It's yard sale week!! I have been busy picking up donations, sorting donations into Boxes by category, deciding on my plan for pricing items, ordering balloons, buying supplies and making signs. I feel like I should post a blog after all this busyness dies down to share what all I've learned. It's all coming together nicely! I really could not have done this without the help of some really amazing friends and God's grace. We are so so blessed!! Hope to see some of you Thursday night to help set up or at the sale Friday and Saturday!

Our front porch turned out to be a good space for sorting donations while it's raining!

Look at all those donations!

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs 😁👍

And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. Lots of sign making to do tonight and tomorrow!