Anglo Doorstep Collections

So last night I sent the evening drinking tea and watching the British Sewing Bee with Alice and Hebe, and then the first series of Celebrity Traitors (gripping!) and then we entirely filled my tiny car with their boxes and bags of bric à brac and textiles and books, and I drove it home and left it with everything in the car as a kind of storage locker overnight ready for the Anglo Doorstep man in the morning.

It's a brilliant system — UK friends, it's well worth looking to see if they collect in your area. You book a collection a couple of weeks in advance, or they notify you if they'll be coming by your area in a week's time so you can book with shorter notice. You can choose from a selection of charities to benefit from your donation. I chose the animal charity — the RSPCA.

You start sorting and packing your donations — the sort of thing you would send to sell in a charity shop, not just rubbish — into the three categories (bric à brac, textiles, books), and label the bags/boxes ready to go.

Three days before the collection they email a reminder.

The evening before the collection they send a two-hour time slot.

You can put your things out for them, or they will knock on the door to collect (good in wet weather).

On the day they notify when the driver is on his way, giving you twenty minutes to get ready, and the email has a real-time map showing the van moving to your house.

And then bingo! It's done!

But — I was shocked by this — the driver told me that some people put out actual rubbish to be collected. He said these are people who the bin men refuse to collect from, and put red stickers on their rubbish bins, whether because they don't bother to sort it or because they just routinely put out too much, I don't know.

So these loathsome people book an Anglo Doorstep Collection — because it's free and they can't be bothered to take their rubbish to the tip — and box it up for the Anglo men to take, pretending it's charity donations. And when they get it back to the yard and open it they discover it was only actual garbage, so they have to take it to the tip.

That is mean and unpleasant beyond words. A particularly obnoxious and selfish form of fly-tipping. So the driver said he has been suggesting they levy a charge to disincentivise this behaviour. 

But before these orcs manage to spoil the whole wonderful system for the rest of us, now's the time to book an Anglo Doorstep Collection and declutter your house!