Poole china set

Many thanks to the donor of this attractive set of Poole china.

£400 for the whole, or we could split it up. There's also a set of blue Midwinter china.

Dining table for sale at Burleigh St charity shop

Varnished pine dining table to seat 6 people, plus chairs, for sale £80.

Wayne and Ffiona managed to collect it from the donor in their hatchback, but you would need a car with the capability of folding down the back seats to take it away.

(The crockery is not included).

Sunday at 61 Burleigh Street

Thank-you for all the fantastic donations, including this incredibly realistic soft toy, some superb pictures, delightful Hello Kitty charm necklaces, and a pair of two foot high chess pieces.

Ffiona, Wayne and Phil have been adding more shelves to our books and media section.

We've also got a selection of May Ball frocks and suits and lots of fresh summer blouses and tops which are flying off the racks as fast as our volunteers can steam iron them and put them out.

Drop by for some fantastic bargains.

We urgently need to increase our fundraising to meet the increasingly worrying costs of veterinary treatment, which I will discuss in another post.

Sunday at our Burleigh St shop

Ffiona and Teresa have created an amazing "floating handbag" display.

We took £183, making this the best Sunday so far. Many thanks to the donor of the writing bureau which sold for £50.

Please keep the donations coming! We sell over 100 items in a typical day, so we need to receive at least 100 items to keep the sales area well-stocked.

Easter Monday at 61 Burleigh Street

Radiator-hanging cat bed

Unusual cat scratching post

 Lots of goodies for cat-lovers at the moment, including this fake-fur bed (to hang off a radiator), the unusual wall-mounted cat scratch post shown below, and various smaller beds, bowls etc.

The cat scratching / climbing tree is nearly as tall as I am and made of rattan cane. It includes several shelves for climbing or resting and is new and never used. It's intended to be attached to a wall by screw fittings, but could be supported by tying to banisters etc. to avoid marking a wall.

Opening on Easter Monday was a bit of an experiment, but sales were nearly as good as on a normal Saturday, so I'm hoping to do more bank holidays in future. We could do with more volunteers able to help cover as the usual weekday people would like to spend the holidays with their families.

If you might be interested in training to help with occasional and/or weekend cover at the shop, please drop by and have a word with the manager, or email camshop@rspca-cambridge.org.uk Initial training would be given by Ffiona on a Saturday, as she doesn't work Sundays or bank holidays.

Results of the volunteers' hard work at E61

We still need to improve the lighting, but it's amazing what an improvement filling in the cracks  and repainting can produce.

We're now putting out our summer stock and (as always!) more donations would be much appreciated.

If you would like to drop off donations by car, you can get to the back entrance of the charity shop via Paradise street which runs parallel to Burleigh st.

Please phone ahead (01223 312 802) to let us know you're coming, so we can let you in, or just park behind the shop and come round to the front entrance.

Redecorations at our Burleigh St shop

Alan trying to get the rails back straight!

We closed two hours early on Sunday so that the paint would be dry enough to put the rails back up on Monday. I looked in mid-morning today to take these photos and it's already a great improvement with beautiful, evenly-painted walls instead of all the marks and holes where fittings had been hung and moved.

Open on Tuesday as normal.

As always, we need donations of saleable stock to keep our till ringing.

Charity shop this Sunday

We took £186 and Phil managed to get a lot of shelf-filling and tidying done in the book section, while Jefferson held the fort at the till.

Vinyl records are still popular sellers. If you have any old records that you no longer want, don't throw them away; we can turn them into cash to help animals in need.

Sunday at the Burleigh St shop

Wren ornament

Long-tailed tits

"Compulsory Education"

We're regularly taking £100+ on Sundays now, which makes it well worth doing as it's more than we'd expect to raise by "stand-alone" events like jumble sales and all of it can go towards helping animals as this is the one day when it's possible to staff the shop with all volunteers.

61 Burleigh Street shop closed Monday 29th November

The RSPCA shop at 61 Burleigh Street, Cambridge will be closed all day on Monday 29th November so we can reorganise the sales space and put up our Christmas decorations.

We'll be open as normal from Tuesday 30th, with lots of extra rail space for clothes. We depend on you to keep the donations coming so we can fill all of it (please!)

If you're having a pre-Christmas clear-out, we can raise funds from any textile items, even ones that are completely worn out, as these can be sold for recycling. 

Aww! A Furby!

Had to go back to the shop today to drop off some old newspapers for wrapping china as we were nearly out of them yesterday and it's wasteful to use new bags just to protect breakables that buyers are going to wash anyway before eating off them. While I was there I thought I might as well tidy up some of the chaos from yesterday; then someone phoned to ask if they could drop off a large donation of children's toys, and with one thing and another I ended staying for most of the rest of the day.

While we're so short-handed at the shop, this may be the way to go as I got a lot more done with the shop closed. Basically running a charity shop is like painting the Forth bridge: hopefully people will be buying stuff every day; but then the gaps they make have to be filled up. If you're aiming to take £500 daily and the average price of what you're selling is three to five pounds, then you have to put out at least a hundred individual somethings every day.

In practice, you need a fair bit more than a hundred because not everything will sell.

Your hundred items come out of the stock room, and that has to be continually refilled by donations or the shop will fold. At a very rough estimate I think I got just about a hundred items priced and put out to fill the gaps made by shoppers on Saturday and there were at least a hundred individual toys in the donation that was dropped off. I'm not a toy expert, but most of them looked in good condition and saleable — although someone will need to check that the jigsaws have all their pieces and that the battery operated toys do work. 

One of the toys I did recognise was a Furby, which did its stuff very cutely when I figured how to switch it on. 

There's also a rather alarming mauve skipping rope which counts how many skips the unfortunate child manages and also seems to be in working order.

What a day!

Up at six; wash up cat bowls; bleach & re-fill litter trays; wash floors; bath to render self acceptable to respectable human company; feed cats; feed self. Tablets for the five cats who need them.

Drop off Fern, who is one of my own cats, to the vet for an ultrasound check of her heart condition. Then back home. Decide no point moping about waiting for the vet to call, so into the shop early. Hardly had time to start discussing plans for next week when the call came to say F. was ready to collect, so turned round and zoomed back to the vet.

Results were not great, but better than I'd been fearing. Fern's heart condition is worse, but not dreadful and they think putting her on beta blockers should get her heart rate down enough to make it possible to think about tackling the underlying problem, which is that her hyperthyroidism has stopped responding to carbimazole treatment. Back home with F. and a packet of tablets to add to her collection of medication.

Then back to the shop again. We've no volunteers to cover Saturday afternoons at the moment, so I did the till while Bettina (shop manager) carried on with pricing and refilling gaps where items had been sold. Ideally we'd have at least three people, so that one could do the till; another keep moving new stock out onto the shop floor, and the third sort, steam and price stock ready to be put out.

It was a fairly busy day, although most people weren't going for the more expensive things. Ffiona and Bettina have just put out all the really good ball gowns that they've been saving up for the May Ball season, so let's hope those go when that kicks off at the end of the month. Right now the students are in the middle of exams, so probably not in the mood for retail therapy.

As often happens, there was a surge of activity just before five, so I couldn't bail out until just past the hour. I hared off to the clinic as I was supposed to be meeting a work experience pupil at five and got there at five twenty with no sign of the pupil. I hope he either couldn't make it or forgot, but he was ever so keen on the telephone, so I rather fear he arrived on time, found everything locked up & went away disappointed.

Hung around for another hour dealing with post and emptying the rubbish in case he went back home and phoned my mobile when he got there, then decided to call it a day. Back home; quick shop run for weekend food; then cat food and litter to one of our fosterers.

We really, really need more volunteers to cover the shops.

Volunteering at our charity shops

We urgently need more volunteers at our shop at 61 Burleigh street. This is a big shop, now taking over £300 every day, but high turnover means that we need lots of helpers to keep donations moving out onto the shop floor.

Basically the process goes like this:

• Unsorted goods come in, either brought to the shop by individual donors, or collected via house-clearance runs or "trawling" (which is where we drop off collection bags in a street and return next week to pick them up, hopefully containing lots of things we can sell).
• We empty the bags into a large sorting bin, separating any obviously unsaleable items. Unsaleable textiles, shoes and metal items are bagged up for sale to recycling merchants. 
• The remaining items are checked again (e.g. for missing buttons, rips, stains). 
•  Any out-of season clothes (e.g. heavy winter coats in summer) are put into storage for their correct season.
• In-season clothes are hung on coathangers on a movable clothes rail, and items like crockery, bags, hats, shoes etc. are sorted into storage boxes.
• We use a steamer (basically similar to a large kettle with a flexible plastic spout ending in a bar like a vacuum cleaner attachment) to iron out creases and generally freshen up the clothes so that they look attractive.
• Each item of clothing is checked for size labels and the correct "size cube" is attached to its hanger. A price tag is completed and attached using a "pricing gun". Items like crockery and bric-à-brac are priced using sticky lables.
• As items on the shop floor are sold, the sales area is continually "topped up" from the clothes rail and the storage boxes in the back room. It's essential to keep up the flow so that the shop never looks bare and customers will keep on being attracted to come back.

At present we don't have enough volunteers to ensure that there is always at least one person to work in the back room as well as the one sitting at the till in the shop. Most of the time it would be useful to have at least two backroom helpers, so that one can be preparing goods and the other putting them out, as well as giving the person on the till cover for breaks.

If you might be interested in helping, please drop in at 61 Burleigh Street any day Monday-Saturday between 11 am and 5 pm.

Our shops are our only good source of regular income, and by supporting them you would be giving a real boost to our ability to provide local animal welfare services. It's also fun and a wonderful way to meet like-minded people

Deputy Shop Manager Post Available

Our present deputy manager at 61 Burleigh Street is moving away from Cambridge in the New Year, so we are recruiting a replacement.

The post involves working a total of 24 hours per week, with some additional cover for the manager's holidays. Starting salary is £6.21 per hour (review after 6 months).

As Emporium 61 works at the vintage/retro end of the charity shop market any applicant will need an interest in fashion and willingness to learn.

You can download a full job description from our website.

Christmas Hat Tree

If you can't think what to get your mum, why not try a nice, warm hat from 61 Burleigh Street? Smarter than the average bobble.

Very nearly there...

The map below shows how to get to our new charity shop: "Emporium 61". Burleigh street is pedestrianised, but there's ample parking in the Grafton Centre car park if you're coming from outside Cambridge.

If you're planning to drop off donated items and need to unload from a car, you need to go to the unloading area in Paradise Street which runs parallel to Burleigh Street. If you're using a satnav device that uses postcodes, entering CB1 1DR should get you into Paradise street. At the moment we are still fitting out the shop, so it would be very helpful if you could wait another couple of weeks before bringing your donations.

We will be announcing the definite opening date very soon now...

View RSPCA E61 in a larger map