I work on a big corporation, which is associated with United Way.
That means that every year, at the end of September the company, together with many other companies in the area, donates its employee’s time to do volunteer work. And this day we call Day of Caring.

I’ve been participating on the Day of Caring for the past three years.

In 2010, we went to a local park and the job was to remove the invasive plants that take over the ground not allowing the native plants to grow and develop. We were searching for 4 bad guys, but found only 3 actually: ivy, stinky bob and Himalayan blackberries.

In 2011 we helped the Center for Human Services, in Shoreline, which is an organization that provides services such as Family Counseling, Family Support Center and Substance Abuse Treatment and Prevention. On that year, they had acquired a new location, so our job was to move some furniture/papers between the 2 locations, rearrange furniture, paint office, assemble new furniture, unassemble old broken furniture and put it in the trash, organize some inventories, change light bulbs, and other little jobs like that. It was very labor intensive and varied.

Then, this year, we went over to Hospitality House, in Burien. The organization is a 9 bed shelter for homeless women and they needed some help with kitchen renovation and bathroom painting. I ended up taking the bathroom painting task. Not really too extremely fun to be inside with paint fumes all day, but it was nice to be there with friends helping someone who needed our hand. And the bathroom was looking muuuuuch better after we left. It went from a very ugly and dirty blue, to a nice and clean white. How long it will stay clean I don’t know, but it certainly looks much nicer now.

I was hard but very rewarding work (and of course a good excuse to change a bit what we do everyday, don’t even bother to check or reply to work emails, and see everyone being ok with that)

Looking forward for the next year’s event.