Day: March 4, 2017

Categories
Custom amish gazebo Custom shed Playhouses nj

Three Surprising Facts About Amish Goods

Amish adirondack chairs

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to take a drive through Amish country, you know the magnificent beauty of the Amish barns and quality sheds that grace the horizon. Even if you’ve never step food anywhere near the areas that produce Amish built sheds, you know that there are no great quality sheds, garages, farm tables, and all other furniture things than the product of Amish workshops. We all know this. But their are a lot of things regarding Amish-made goods that you might not be aware of. For example, here are a few truth bombs that might take you by surprise:


Three Surprising Facts About Amish Goods

  1. Amish-made Goods Don’t Always Look Like They Were Made a Century Ago.
    The image you have of Amish made goods probably looks like it belongs in Abe Lincoln’s grandmother’s cabin. The reason for this is the great quality sheds and other outbuildings that are build by Amish hands are made to last forever. The structures that were produced by Amish builders a hundred years ago are still around today, looking like they were just built. However, this doesn’t mean that Amish builders are only able to create goods that look like they’re from the last century. In fact, like all craftsmen, Amish builders are usually hip with what’s hip. They build furniture and goods to compliment any design style that their customers are looking for. In fact, unlike any manufacturers who produce goods in a factory overseas, Amish builders can accommodate any instructions that their clients give them. They don’t just create superior quality sheds, garages, and furniture; they create high quality and custom sheds, garages, and furniture.


  2. Amish Goods Aren’t Just Available to People Who Live Nearby
    We enjoy buying everything we need with the click of a button. Thanks to retailers like Amazon, we can get toilet paper, furniture, groceries, and maybe even vehicles on the World Wide Web, without leaving the comfort of our home.


    Meanwhile, to quote the great lyricist, Weird Al Yankavich, Amish craftsman shun fancy things like electricity. Because of this, it’s easy to assume that Amish made goods aren’t available to you unless you’re able to physically visit an Amish workshop and talk to a craftsman in person (shutter at the thought). However, as with any other kind of manufactured goods, Amish goods follow the normal supply chain of manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. The skilled hands that build your Amish-made goods probably aren’t posting selfies on Instagram. However, there are suppliers of Amish goods who are reachable on the interwebs. These go-betweens are happy to work with you to get the Amish touch that you want, no matter what part of the globe you’re on.


  3. Amish-made Items Don’t Cost an Arm and a Leg.

    We all know that Amish goods are better quality than their counterparts that are created on a conveyor belt in a factory across the globe with very little quality control (or human rights, for that matter). However, some people assume that the improved level of quality that comes with a skilled craftsman making your piece of furniture by hand and demanding perfection of themselves will come with an equally high price tag. However, there are several reasons that Amish made items have lower overhead than big box items.

    1. The furniture you buy from a big box furniture store come with about a thousand line items that you’re paying for. Your piece of furniture pays a CEO and a staff of hundreds of factory workers, transporters, logistics workers, sales people, and cashiers who had a hand in producing the piece. On the other hand, Amish made goods only go to pay the craftsman who actually builds your piece.
    2. Included in the price tag of mass-produced goods is the cost to source the materials in one part of the globe, ship them to another place to build the piece, and then ship them to your local store. Meanwhile, Amish craftsman generally source the materials they use to build their goods locally from sustainable sources. This costs a lot less and puts far less middle-men who take a cut in the equation.
    3. Amish builders believe in the principal of wasting nothing. This means their materials go much further, costing you less.

Do you have questions? Share below!

Categories
Clothes donations Red cross clothing pickup

DOs and DON’Ts for Donating Goods to Charity

Clothing donations

Have you ever considered clearing out the clutter you have around the house with a Red Cross clothing pick up service? We know what you’re probably thinking…”Red Cross clothing pick up service? I thought the Red Cross was for blood donations and money!”


In reality, the Red Cross is instrumental in meeting a wide range of needs when disaster strikes across the globe. Some of those needs are met with your blood donation. Some of those needs are met with your cash donation. And some of those needs are met with their Red Cross clothing pick up program.


When you use a Red Cross clothing pick up service, you’re able to clear out the unneeded clutter in your home, without even leaving your drive way. From there, the Red Cross uses your goods to take care of people in need. Your unneeded items meet a need and get a second life, rather than collecting dust in your home until you threw them away and they ended up in a landfill. That’s what we call a win, win, win situation my friend.

However, there’s a right and a wrong way to make used clothing donations. Whether you’re making American Red Cross donations, or you donate clothing to any other equally valid organization, please remember our list of DOs and DON’Ts:


DOs and DON’Ts for Donating Goods to Charity

  1. DO Group Similar Items Together

    The volunteers who work in the receiving center at the Red Cross, or any other organization that you give your goods to, sort through thousands and thousands of bags of goods per day. It’s their responsibility to figure out what is suitable to be reused or sold in their thrift store, and what should be recycled.


    Now, imagine that those thousands of bags were actually filled with jigsaw puzzle pieces that created one big picture, but you didn’t know what that picture was. When you put the bottom to the pot in this box and the lid to it in that box over there, and one flip flop here and the pair in another bag down the way, the volunteers who have to sort out your stuff are essentially doing a jigsaw puzzle without any reference picture. They don’t even know if you included both shoes in any of the bags. As you can imagine, this requires more effort than value they can really get from your donation.


    Instead, take just a few extra minutes while you’re boxing up your goods and attach like items together with a rubber band or tape. While we’re on the subject, it makes it a lot easier on the sorters if you put all the kitchen items together in a single box, and all the clothing items together and so on. Then, you’ve done the hard part of the jigsaw puzzle for the volunteers.

  2. DON’T Donate Trash

    Whether the organization you’re giving to is giving your goods directly to families in need, or selling them in a thrift store and using the cash to further their purpose, they can’t do anything with items that are broken or too worn out to be used. In these cases, the volunteers usually have to discard the broken and worn out items. In fact, you pay a trash service to come pick up your garbage. When you give unusable items to a Red Cross clothing pick up program, you’re literally treating them like a free trash service.


    If your unwanted items are not usable, look for an organization that recycles them for another purpose instead of an organization like the Red Cross that wouldn’t be able to reuse them.


  3. DO Treat Fragile Items as You Would if You Were Moving.

    As we mentioned above, items that are broken don’t really serve any purpose for a charity like Red Cross. If an item is in good shape when you turn it over to the donation pick up workers, but breaks before it makes it to the donation center, it serves as little purpose as if it were broken to begin with. To protect your donated items and ensure they do the most good, wrap breakable items in news paper or grocery bags or bubble tape or another protective barrier and write, “Handle with Care!” on the exterior.

Do you have questions or comments? Share below!