The Ones Who Wash the Jars

I've volunteered at the food bank in Hull for three years now, and Saturday morning is always the same job: I sort the boxes.

This morning there was a lot of soap. Bars of soap, bottles of soap, big and small. I made one tidy pile of all the soap by the wall.

Then I found the jam. So much jam! Strawberry, raspberry, a lot of orange. People give a lot of jam and not much pasta. I don't know why.

A lady came in with two heavy bags. “Where do I put these?” she asked. She had washed every jar before she brought them. They were clean and bright.

“You can put them here,” I said. “Thank you. This is very helpful.”

“My husband says I keep too much in the house,” she said. “So I bring it here. Someone can use it.”

I have met many kind people in this job, but the ones who wash the jars first — those are my favourite.

We store the food on long shelves. Soap on the left, jam on the right. By eleven, everything was tidy. And we had enough jam for the whole town.