Source: Toronto Sun (Nov. 5th, 2025) by Mark Wessel
The best time to donate winter clothing, whether it’s for Start Me Up or a comparable charity where you live, is right away.
The lack of affordable and attainable housing in Canada is a storyline that sadly won’t go away until we produce more creative, more innovative ways to build homes. Of equal importance, yet much less of a story making the news is the fact that homelessness is rising.
According to a 2024 study, there are over 80,000 homeless people in Ontario alone. Equally alarming, is the fact that 2.5 percent of households or 938,000 people in this country experience homelessness at some point in their lives.
While there are no simple explanations as to why this has become such a problem, the Tamarack Institute attributes that last statistic to such compounding challenges as: unemployment or low-paying jobs, a higher cost of living (including rent spikes), racialized communities, single-parent families (mostly headed by women) and people with disabilities, including mental health challenges.
Not unlike our housing affordability crisis, there are no easy solutions to our country’s homelessness crisis. Despite that reality, there remains a glimmer of hope in terms of finding ways to comfort people who are homeless, thanks to organizations like Start Me Up Niagara.
Start Me Up operates a unique mix of complementary services for underprivileged and unsheltered members of the Niagara Region, operating a work action centre, a garden centre, a bike program and a mobile closet.
The mobile closet is a particularly unique initiative that involves organizing two-hour “shopping” events for clothing donated by members of the community, which are staged adjacent to libraries and community centres where less advantaged people tend to congregate.
As Start Me Up’s assistant program coordinator Rebecca Jacobs explains, “we organize these events so that when people come, they have a true shopping experience, and there’s no cost to participants,” she says, adding that “all of our clothing is separated by size and by gender. So they’re given a bag when they get there. And they’re allowed one bag of clothes per person, one pair of shoes and one jacket.”
Of course the mobile closet wouldn’t even be possible without clothing donations from everyday citizens willing and able to help. “We put out a needs list and that changes by season,” shares Jacobs. “So right now, for example, we’re asking for winter coats that are waterproof. We’re asking for boots, particularly men’s, because we tend to not get quite as many men’s donations. And waterproof gloves.”
So why such a shortage of men’s clothing? A recent study conducted by the British Heart Foundation may provide part of the answer. The study found that 25 per cent of men have never donated clothing, despite the fact that men’s clothing sales are up 35 per cent year over year.
Various online sources cite a number of reasons why many of us don’t donate clothing, ranging from not being aware of the need to psychological or emotional “just in case” reasons for holding on to garments we haven’t worn in years. That’s despite the fact that a common rule of thumb is if you haven’t worn something in a couple of years, realistically you really don’t want or even need it.
Start Me Up’s parameters for clothing donations, not unlike peer organizations such as the Oasis Clothing Bank (www.clothingbank.ca) in Toronto or Out of the Closet in Ottawa (www.kindspace.ca/outofthecloset), are to donate “seasonably appropriate, gently used clothing.”
Which means not donating summer wear as we head into the winter, or items of clothing that are no longer suitable for wearing. Other noteworthy charities accepting clothing include: the Salvation Army Thrift Store, Goodwill and Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Yet another key consideration that will help organizations such as these is not to just drop the clothing off outside but ideally hand it over so the items being donated aren’t ruined by inclement weather while adding to the burden of the organizations running these programs.
For instance, Start Me Up has predetermined drop-off days and times as follows: Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 2 p.m. at their 203 Church Street location in downtown St. Catharines.
In terms of the best time to donate winter clothing, whether it’s for Start Me Up or a comparable charity where you live, NOW is the optimum time to wade through your closet for such essential items as the winter coat you forgot you even had.
Because as Jacobs presciently observes, “we need winter clothing now, because it may not be snowing yet, but it’s still cold outside.”
Mark Wessel lives in Ridgeway, Ont. and is a passionate advocate for living more sustainably at home and in the greater community. Visit www.markdouglaswessel.com