Cleaning involves throwing out your accumulated clutter. Discarding things that you unknowingly have grown attached to over the years is precisely what makes this a difficult and at times emotional task.
But the fact that your inner sense tells you to finally let go of something does not mean you have to ship it to the trash. How about giving it a new life and resettling it into another home?
Danetta Bronnimann did exactly that. Instead of sending a decoratively-painted, antique, wooden box to the garbage dump, she decided to donate it to IRC Tucson in hopes of bringing joy to newly arrived refugees.
Bronnimann bought the box from National Geographic more than two decades ago to decorate her house. “The reason I decided to give it to IRC is that I have a lot of things going on in my life. I have so much stuff and I could never organize where I wanted to go in my life,” Bronnimann says, “but I realized if I could only take 10 or 20 percent of my things, it would not be that. The box is beautiful and it meant a lot to me, but it was time to let go of it.”
The antique box left its familiar home environment and traveled to IRC Tucson’s donation closet. It spent several days in the dark next to baby clothes, books, dishes, hair ties and pens, before finding a new home: Arkan Hasan’s home.
Eight months ago Hasan arrived in the United States as a refugee from Iraq with his wife and four children. During IRC’s open hours he asked for blankets, but the donation closet had run out of those. Luckily, he did not leave empty handed and was happy to bring a beautiful antique box home to his wife and children. Bronnimann says, “Why should people only have discards? They deserve something beautiful.”
The jewelry box has successfully been resettled for it found a new home. Resettlement of your old belongings may bring some relief to refugees in their own challenging resettlement process.
Whether it is an antique box, an unwanted toy or a collection of used furniture, to make an in kind donation please contact our Development Associate, Brittany Schilling, at (520) 319-2128 or Brittany.Schilling@theirc.org.
Written by Kirsten Boele, Development Intern
