I spend half my weekends in a shop. I’m not spending money but I’m also not earning any.  Much of the time I’m sat at a till serving customers, tidying the shop, price checking new products and drinking lots of tea. The rest of the time I’m sorting donations, pricing up books and circulating stock.

Just lately, I’m stepping up to a kind of lead volunteer when I’m there. I don’t open up – I’m usually late so someone else does that part – but in addition to the above, I process any refunds, count up the previous day’s takings to make sure they tally up, prepare Monday’s floats, prepare the remaining cash to go to the bank, empty the tills at the end of the day, do the lock up, deal with any queries the other volunteers can’t… I’m sure there are other things I’ve forgotten.

It would be reasonable to ask why I do all this.

The answer is that I get more from doing all of that than they get from me. Here’s some examples of what I gain:

• I get to be around people. For five days a week I work (paid this time.) I’m almost always sitting alone in a room of my house occasionally talking to faces on a screen. It’s just not the same as interacting with actual physical people.
• I see immediate results from what I do. Working for Listen Up! and Groundswell gives results but it’s harder to see the impact of what you’ve done – sometimes it can be months before you can see that you’ve done something well. However, changing a display, serving someone, chatting with someone about a book they’ve picked out… I can immediately see the impact I’ve had.
• I get first pickings of donations. I rarely get my hands on discounted (sometimes free) books in my weekday role. I really like books.
• People make me cups of tea. Until I teach my cat how to do that, I’m afraid it isn’t happening when I’m working from home.
• Books. Just books. I really like books. Books.
• Tat. Don’t underestimate how much you can laugh at some of the things you see in donations. Tat is treasure.
• The variety of people. With my colleagues and our brilliant volunteers, there is a lot of similarity amongst us. We are all passionate about homelessness, for instance. When I volunteer I spend my time with a retired pub inspector, a retired translator, a former factory worker, someone who used to babysit a musician’s children, a stamp and coins expert, a book trader… most of these people have never really thought about homelessness outside of talking to me, and I’ve never really considered many of their backgrounds. I learn lots of random information I never realised I wanted to know.

There are downsides. I don’t know what I think about the charity I volunteer for. I applied for the location and the books. I stay for the above. The charity themselves… I think different things at different times. Unlike my paid role. I love what Listen Up! and Groundswell do.

I suppose between the two I have balance. I get different things from each role and need both in equal measure. I couldn’t do shop work all the time because I’m not passionate about it – it’s something I enjoy but if I did it all the time, I’d likely need to volunteer doing something like what I’m paid for to stop myself going mad[der].

Volunteering has always been a way for me to carve out time for myself, doing something I enjoy enough to spend a day or two a week immersed in it, but not enough to want to spend 40 hours a week doing it. It’s a place to choose my commitments, my responsibilities, my hours. A place to be myself without considering my place as a cog within a larger machine.

Volunteering is priceless for me. And that is why I do it for free.