Welcome To Housing Home Goods Bank Bi-Weekly Blog July 25, 2025
Greetings All!
Warning, this blog was written by an over tired “rambling man” and may cause drowsiness and random fits of chuckling…
One of our great volunteers is on our Board of Directors and heads up our Fundraising Committee. His name is Craig Saunders, and he works for Machias Savings Bank.
He and I had a chance to sit in on a Zoom Meeting with people who are involved with furniture banks from all over the country! What was fascinating was learning about what they do and understanding how different our programs are but more often, despite differences in populations, they have a LOT of similarities.
The session that was a bit dry was focused on federal funding and lobbying your legislators (here in Maine we stalk them when they come home to visit…humor). When I used to talk with the (now retired) director of the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter, one of the things that really stood out was NEVER, ever be dependent on grants, look at building your base of private donors (individuals, businesses, organizations) and NEVER rely or let your organization DEPEND on federal funding. It’s especially true now, not to wax political, but it’s obvious that empathy for people who are struggling is not a priority at this time.
My way of learning since the bullying kept me distracted at school (and making it hard to get good grades everyone knew I could get but couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting better grades) was to learn from mentors.
It’s interesting when you think of humanity on a whole, it comes down to one major thing: Relationships.
I got a kick out of a long-time contact. I think it started when she was getting a bed for a relative in need. If memory serves, she was happy that (when we were in our 2,267 square foot location in the back of the Old Town Plaza for 4 years, courtesy of Carol Epstein and one of her agents, Bev Uhlenhake) we were able to not only provide a bed, but a number of other items. Years later, she and her husband were clients of mine as a real estate broker.
In a upcoming Bi-Weekly Blog, she’s offered to share her experience working with Welcome To Housing and yours truly.
Not too long ago, that same contact saw a post that we had another “Mattress Exodus” as I call them. I always manage to say “Why YES” when offered beds/mattresses and box springs, after which my mind becomes hyper vigilant trying to figure out HOW and WHEN and WHO is going to help us get them from the hotel, usually in Bangor, sometimes Orono, up the Interstate to 333 Main, our 1820s beauty in Old Town.
So, she explained to me that she saw the Facebook post and said her daughter worked for a local business that might (and DID) help with the MASSIVE mattress move.
A little bit of a “rerun” or “déjà vu” from a previous blog: (It’s Friday and I didn’t get the Memo from the Department of Redundancy Department).
She is now working on getting her master’s degree and one of the classes she’s taking part in more recently was learning about grant writing. The BIG question from the class was HOW? How do we do what we do, serving so many people, working with clients from over 70 agencies/organizations…and yet…we have NO paid staff, and never have… Pretty cool question as we’ve been doing this for 14 years, come this October.
One word was my answer…”Volunteers.”
So, when she shares her insights, it will be good to learn how we’re seen by someone who has seen us in action and has returned the favor to help us raise awareness.
This past week was incredible too, not just for one annual donation of $1,000 from a donor that came over a month earlier than normal, and the great looking queen and king mattresses and box springs we picked up from a local hotel. They are in great condition because the mattresses were encased in some sort of covering under the regular fitted sheets.
So, the connection we made through my contact’s daughter helped not only with a truck but with his own “elbow grease” as they call it. It’s an old expression that means “working hard.” In fact, my late Mom told me that her sister was sent to the grocery store, probably by their father to “Pick up some elbow grease.”
Well, my Auntie Ann (according to my Mom) wasn’t too thrilled (after hunting around the store to the bemusement of some of the store staff) when some kind soul explained to the young lady that it was a ruse, or a joke. It’s right up there with “an ADJUSTABLE Metric wrench” or going to an auto mechanic and being jokingly told they needed to “top off your headlight fluid.”
Alas, it’s FRIDAY and I digress.
Anywhoo, the gentleman felt bad because the 26-foot truck he hoped would be available had been delayed in coming back to Bangor so he brought a large flatbed (no pun intended) that had fence-like sides and back. It reminded me of my little red wooded Town & County wagon with the stake sides.
The answer in getting additional help came from a wonderful source. Years ago one of the local sober living group homes helped us with volunteers from their men’s program. Eager to get more hands to help with the big mattress move, I reached out to them and sure enough we had 3 men help in the morning and later in the day after a quick trip to Ellsworth and back, our major mattress mover hero came back and again I picked up two more men to help, one who had helped in the morning run and a new face joined us, with a big smile who was ready to help.
It feels good to help and take part in something like a large volume move and knowing when they move from the group home into their own place to start their life of sobriety, Welcome To Housing will BE THERE for them to help make their “empty space” into a “meaningful place.” That expression comes from a UMaine technical writing class student or students who incorporated it into a very poignant graphic.
It's been a GREAT week and there’s a deep feeling of satisfaction when we have a large volume donation and here’s the best part… This coming week we’re going to get the rest of the beds from the hotel and again we will have a crew to help SammiJo our Warehouse Manager and Chief U-Haul driver!
In closing, I want to thank everyone for their support and God love you if you actually READ these blogs.
I’m sitting on my bed with my legs in pneumatic leg thingies. I have issues since my TWO grand openings courtesy of rib-spreaders back in 2020. When they yank out a leg vein to re-plumb your heart with a bypass (I had a triple), a lot of things happen. First you fret and obsess about the scenes in the film about choreographer Robert “Bob” Fosse in the biographical film, “All That Jazz.”
Nothing like having a VERY strong visual memory and seeing (and God help me, HEARING) a rib-spreader in action and knowing that’s your fate in a few weeks, is well, CREEPY as, well, you know…
My older half sister and matchmaker to my parents, (the school picture business owner/photographer and the painter/artist head of the PTA) relayed to me while I was in the 26 day adventure away from home for the surgery (and a week in a cardiac rehab setting), the torn graft (when they pulled out one of the two external pacemaker wires) and grand Re-Opening told me something I never knew before. Lynne has been in the respiratory therapy field since the 1960s. And to paraphrase Linny-Dinny, “Before they developed the rib-spreader, they used to remove a rib (insert Adam and Eve dad joke here) and do the surgery and then the rib would regrow back in the sheath.”
“Urp…Gee thanks Sis!” That’s another visual created in my head by my imagination, a forerunner or dare I say “pre-cursor” to A.I. (artificial intelligence). Two things that DIDN’T cross my mind, let alone KNOW, not even “biblically” (Sorry, someone was thinking that) was the following… The vein they take from your leg to use like PEX piping (not to be confused with “pecs”) is not only STRONGER than any of the plumbing around your heart, it also only lets the blood flow in ONE direction… the other?
The realization or lack of realization you’ve lost several days because they have to give you so many drugs… but the (pronounced THEE) freakiest fact I didn’t even think about?
They actually stop down your heart, and hook you up so some Hoover-Like external heart pump, while they muck around with your pulmonary system. EEEK. That was something that never occurred to me thanks to that entirely too graphic movie scene… or “Pre-Cursing” clip.
In short, I am glad to be around to see Welcome To Housing grow and stand around leaning on my canes and sharing Dad jokes and flapping my gums until ears fall off and cows come home. As I can’t help, I figure if I provide some humor, no matter how corny or offbeat it may be, it makes the time go faster and distracts them from the aches and pains of wrestling all those mattresses and box springs and remembering that each set will make someone very happy and help them sleep well.
In fact the lady we helped recently with a wheelchair for her husband, who is paralyzed from an accident a number of years ago called me up asking about the possibility of getting a better bed. Apparently, the box spring is collapsing to the point where her beloved has a hard time sleeping on a sloping bed.
I could hear the smile and the relief in her voice when I told her that her timing couldn’t have been better as we were getting really nice ones from a higher-end hotel.
Relationships and Volunteers make for a good combination, especially when sprinkled liberally with a thick layer of crystals of compassion.
Erase Stigma… Increase Empathy and realize our job as God’s kids… is to be there for one another…
MAN! My legs feel GREAT!
Speaking of relationships, Robin, my beloved and I will celebrate 40 years of playing house next month! Those leg thingies I have that pneumatically work the swelling out of my legs? She got a GREAT deal on them. Marked WAY down, returned to Amazon. I was reading reviews (I have made many videos and photos in reviews I’ve done on that and other sites) and I suddenly realized the reason why they were basically brand new despite being returned.
Why? The reviews with the least stars basically said the same thing. “Took it out of the box, plugged the power pack in, put the leggings on and it didn’t stay on!’
It’s funny, we’re ALL guilty of selective illiteracy at least once in our lives…
The instructions? Namely one of the first?
“Take out the power pack unit… Plug it in and allow it to FULLY CHARGE before using.”
So thanks to one of my fellow Numb-nuts” (who REFUSES to READ directions and can only PRAY there are no parts left over), we got a great deal on the Pneumatic Leg Thingies… Just like the ones they had me use in the hospital while I would think, “Dang! I wish I had something like these at home!” Ha! Wish granted!
Lastly, one more connection. Being wedged in a hospital bed unable to find the up/down buttons for the bed’s backrest section, a male nurse whose first gig was in Thomaston, not the town but rather the long demolished Maine State Prison.
I lamented the challenge I was having and he smiled and said he would be right back…
He returned with a grin and a roll of masking tape. He took the tape, starting right next to the control button on the outside of the bedrail, over the top to the control button on the inside of the bedrail.
Voila!
It’s like the amazing vanishing act the wall clocks pulled down or covered ALL the rooms I stayed in. Either taken off the wall at my request or covered by a towel or pillowcase. It was great to see caregivers, Doctors, CNAs, and Food Service Personnel looking puzzled, wondering where the wall clock went. Why? Well how many doctors and others look at their watch and say, “I’ll be back in a half an hour…” Then you have a staring match with your rooms clock and like someone using telekinesis in reverse…you watch and see the hands barely move as you wait for your caregiver to return.
Another cool fact? When they have you stand against the X-Ray panel and put a refrigerator magnet, (like a heart, a cute critter or other iconic piece you might see on a fridge holding up a kid’s artwork) in the upper right-hand corner of the panel… Second time I saw that I asked, “What’s the deal with the fridge magnet?”
It’s so simple and funny! Each tech has a specific fridge magnet. So, you KNOW who took the X-Ray, and why in the upper right? Well, so when the docs LOOK at the X-Ray on the light panel and see the magnet in the upper right of the image, they know they’re seeing the image in the correct juxtaposition…in other words… it’s not being seen BACKWARDS! You’re WELCOME.
Thank Good It’s Friday! T.G.I.F. Or as I say on the day before, “So Happy It’s Thursday!”
It’s AMAZING what can happen when you have a challenge now matter how great or small, and you do what my Mom ALWAYS said, “Just ask NICELY.”
Much love and peace to all of your out there in the Welcome To Housing Home Goods Bank, Incorporated “Blog-Osphere.”
Almost forgot! When pulling out those pneumatic leg thingies tonight? I found one of my semi-long lost prized Hot Wheels! A matte black 1963 Split Window Corvette Hot Wheels with Real Rider Tires. It’s part of my 3-D story board.
Yes, I can hear you now… “Geezum Chris… put down the laptop and get some rest!”
Gratefully,
Christopher Olsen
Founder (one misplaced consonant) I could become a “Flounder”
and Board (but never BORED) President!
