Archive for Charities

Comedy For A Cause

By Teresas Family Cleaning · Comments (1)

Sunday, October 7th, 2012

Event registration for Comedy for a Cause powered by Eventbrite

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Categories : Charities, Long Island Networking, Teresa Recommends

10 charitable ways to conquer clutter

By Francine · Comments (25)

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

Charitable Recycling

Now that kids are back in school, some of you have the house to yourselves and maybe some time to work on those projects that have been put off over the summer (I know I have!) With one child in kindergarten and the other in preschool, I have been using my 3 hours of mommy time to clean out and organize all the bedrooms in the house. It is going to take some time but I am making progress each day!

As I was cleaning out my boys rooms, I started to create a pile of Crocs that did not fit my sons any more but still had plenty of life left in them. They had served both my boys well over the years and I just felt bad tossing them. I set them aside, determined to find some sort of use for them, maybe a craft of some sort, or something for my garden? While researching online, I learned that you can donate your Crocs to people who need shoes in impoverished nations around the world. How cool is that!

Donate those old gadgets to places like charitable organizations like Recycleforbreastcancer.org

Once I found out about this program, I was on a mission! I found several organizations that will take those unused items cluttering up your home and donate them to those who can truly use them or refurbish and sell these items to help pay for programs to benefit the needy. Here are some great programs which will recycle common items around the home:

Books: Send your old books to Books for Soldiers to be included in care packages to our troops overseas.
Cell phones: We all have a old phone lying around in a drawer that we just don’t know what to do with. The Wireless Foundation will refurbish your old phone and give it to a domestic-violence survivor through calltoprotect.org. Cell Phones for Soldiers helps provide cost-free communication services to active duty military members and veterans with your cell phone donations. For information on other cell-phone charities, log on to recyclewirelessphones.com.
Computers: Nextsteprecycling.org repairs your broken computers and gives them to underfunded schools, needy families, and nonprofits.
Eyeglasses: Help others who cannot afford glasses by donating your old ones to neweyesfortheneedy.com. You can also drop off old pairs of glasses at LensCrafters, Target Optical, or other participating stores and doctors’ offices, which will send them to onesight.org.
Formal wear: What do you do with that prom or bridesmaid’s dress that you wore once? Give it to a girl who can’t afford one by sending it to operationfairydust.org or catherinescloset.org).
Furniture: Goodwill Industries will take your old furniture and offers a pick up service for large pieces
Gadgets: We all love gadgets and most likely have a few around collecting dust. Recycleforbreastcancer.org, will send you prepaid shipping labels, recycle your gadgets, then donate the proceeds to breast cancer charities.
Holiday cards: Donate those boxes of old cards to St. Jude’s Ranch for Children (stjudesranch.org). This nonprofit home for abused and neglected children runs a holiday-card reuse program in which the kids cut off the front covers and create new cards to sell, benefiting programs and services.
Men & Women’s Office Attire: Gently worn men’s suits and the like can be donated to Career Gear to help low income men succeed in interviewing and obtaining a job. Dress for Success collects gently worn office attire for economically disadvantaged women.
Sneakers: Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program, nikereuseashoe.com accepts any brand of old sneakers and recycles them into “Nike Grind Material” used to create athletic surfaces for communities in need. If your sneakers are lightly worn, you can donate them to needy athletes in the United States and around the world through oneworldrunning.com.

I hope I have encouraged you to take your cleaning to a new level by donating your useable clutter to those in need. If you find yourself overwhelmed with clutter in your home we would love to help! Our organizing experts can help you sort through any level of clutter (even severe instances) to help reveal a neat and organized home. Call us at 1-866-744-4021 for more details.

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Categories : Charities, Cleaning & Organizing

Tags : charity, clutter, organizing, recycling

Spinal Muscular Atrophy – A Disease in Need of A Cure

By Teresas Family Cleaning · Comments (2)

Tuesday, August 21st, 2012

August is National Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness month.

by Malik Green

In 1984 a group of families, each with children suffering from SMA formed a group called Families of Spinal Muscular Atrophy. In 1996 they decided to create and coordinate a National Awareness month for SMA. Families of SMA have grown from a courageous group of families to an international network of fundraising and support including 31 volunteer Chapters throughout the United States.

Since the month of August is used to bring attention to this terrible disease; I am posting this article to do my part in helping to bring awareness to such a debilitating disease.

Spinal Muscular Atrophy is a rare genetic disease. Spinal Muscular Atrophy manifest itself in various degrees of severity; however, no matter the degree of severity, SMA basically causes the muscles in the body to deteriorate, which eventually impairs mobility. It affects the degree of control nerves branching from the spinal cord have over voluntary muscles. Our voluntary muscles are used for task such as crawling, walking, head and neck control and swallowing.

SMA manifests in many ways, which will vary especially according to type. In all types of SMA, you can expect muscle weakness, wasting and atrophy, as well as muscle coordination problems.

SMA primarily afflicts children; however, it can afflict anyone of any age, and any ethnic group or gender. The most severe cases however do involve infants and children under the age of six. Approximately 1 in 6000 babies are born with the disease and about 1 in 40 people are carriers of this genetic disorder. If both parents of a child are carriers of the disease, the child has a 1-in-4 chance of developing SMA.

All of the muscles in the body are affected by SMA; though the muscles closest to the torso; (shoulders, back, hips and neck) are more severely affected. People afflicted with SMA have mobility issues; but have normal intellectual ability and are bright and sociable individuals.

The following are symptoms of SMA in an infant:

Breathing difficulty, leading to a lack of oxygen
Feeding difficulty (food may go into the windpipe instead of the stomach)
Floppy infant (poor muscle tone)
Lack of head control
Little movement
Weakness that gets worse

The following are symptoms of SMA in a child:

Frequent, increasingly severe respiratory infections
Nasal speech
Posture that gets worse

If you suspect someone of having any of these symptoms have a doctor to review family history and conduct a brain/nervous system examination to find out if there is family history, floppy muscles, lack of deep tendon reflexes and signs of twitching of the tongue muscle.

There currently is no cure for Spinal Muscular Atrophy. The best hope for managing the disease is early detection; and the use of certain medicinal remedies that can help manage the complication associated with SMA.

These disheartening facts demonstrate the need for more awareness in regards to the SMA disease and the need for more research. If you would like to support or learn more about Spinal Muscular Atrophy the following websites offer a ton of information.

http://www.fsma.org/Home/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001991/

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Categories : Charities

Tags : house cleaning, national Spinal Muscular Atrophy Month, teresa's family cleaning

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