843 items: the food drive is wrapped

The food drive closed on January 9th and we ended up with 843 non-perishable items, which is 69% over our original goal of 500. We were not really expecting that. For most of the drive the numbers came in slowly and we were tracking somewhere around goal, maybe a little under. Then the last week happened. A lot of people dropped off donations at TLC Montessori and the Eastlake High School collection points right before the deadline, and the total jumped in those last few days.

It's kind of interesting how that works. People wait, and then they all come through at once. On January 5th we loaded everything up and drove it to the Issaquah Food and Clothing Bank (four boxes, a few bags, and a lot of cans packed into the back of an SUV). They weighed everything on their floor scale when we got there: 414 pounds on the first pass and 413 on a second.

That number felt big to us, since we started the drive thinking we were a little under goal. 414 pounds of food sitting on a scale is what 843 items looks like when it is all in one place. In dollar value that's about $4,160 worth of food families can actually use, which is part of a total community impact of $6,002 once you add in cash donations. The staff were great.

They checked everything, logged it, and showed us which sections the food would go to. We took a few photos outside afterward, and we will probably remember those photos for a while.