Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 830, Donating to a Thrift Store.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 830.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles California, home of Hollywood, home of the Los Angeles Dodgers, my favorite baseball team.
This episode, like all of our episodes, has a learning guide.
Go to ESLPOD.com for more information.
We're going to hear a dialogue between Scott and Nancy about giving things to something called a thrift store, a store that sells used things.
Let's get started.
That's the last bag.
Help me put these into the truck.
I want to get these to the thrift store before they stop taking donations for the day.
Hold on.
That bag has curtains in it.
I know they do.
Those old curtains have been sitting around in the closet for ten years.
It's time to let them go.
But what about this bag?
These are the children's old baby clothes.
You can't just toss these.
They have such sentimental value.
You've kept a lot of the children's old clothes already, but we still have bags and bags of them in the attic.
It's time to put aside sentiment and do some spring cleaning.
After all, we're donating them to a good cause.
Families visiting the thrift store can buy them for their own children.
We get a tax deduction and our items get a new life.
It's a win-win for everybody.
I don't know about that.
What?
You're not getting rid of those chairs, are you?
They still have a lot of life in them.
Our garage is full of old furniture that we don't use.
I'm putting my foot down.
These have to go.
But not those.
Yes, those and those and those.
This is my punishment for marrying a pack rat.
Scott begins by saying that's the last bag.
Help me put these into the truck.
Truck is a large vehicle, like a car.
Scott says, I want to get these to the thrift store before they stop taking donations for the day.
A thrift store is a store that sells old things.
By old, I mean used.
You might have a book or a pair of shoes or some dishes from your kitchen that you don't want anymore.
Well, you can give them to this store, this thrift store, and they will sell them.
Most of the thrift stores are owned by organizations, what we would call charitable organizations.
Charitable C-H-A-R-I-T-A-B-L-E means they're not trying to make money.
These organizations, these charitable organizations.
They're trying to help other people.
And so they get money by selling these old things that people give them to sell.
And that's the next word we have here in this sentence, donations.
A donation D-O-N-A-T-I-O-N is something you give to an organization so that it can be used to help that organization.
In this case, the donations are the things that you give to the thrift store so they can sell it and get money.
Nancy says, hold on, wait.
That bag has curtains in it.
Curtains C-U-R-T-A-I-N-S are large pieces of cloth or fabric that we use to cover a window so that no one can see inside of your house.
Or if you like to sleep until 10 o'clock in the morning, you want curtains to prevent the light from coming in.
I don't sleep until 10 o'clock.
I get up pretty early, actually, usually around 6, 630.
Not that early, but pretty early.
Scott says, I know they do.
I know this bag contains curtains.
Those old curtains have been sitting around in the closet for 10 years.
When we say something has been sitting around, that two-word phrasal verb means to be somewhere, but not actually doing anything important.
It's just taking up space.
We were sitting around in the living room waiting for the baseball game to begin.
We were sitting around.
We weren't doing anything very important.
You can have a book that's been sitting around your office for a year and you have not read it yet.
It just sits there.
It doesn't do anything important or you haven't done anything important with it.
Scott says that the curtains that he wants to give to the thrift store have been sitting around in the closet for 10 years.
Notice that, even though around is a preposition, it's part of the two-word phrasal verb sitting around or to sit around, so you can put another preposition to say where something has been sitting around.
It's a little unusual.
Well, Scott says these curtains have been sitting around in the closet.
C-L-O-S-E-T A closet is something that is usually built into the house.
It's like a little room where you can put things to store them, to keep them.
You can have a closet for your clothes in a bedroom.
Or you could have a closet in your house to put other things like vacuum cleaners and old boxes and I don't know things you use to clean the house.
I don't clean the house.
My wife usually cleans the house.
I know, I know, I should help.
I have other things I do.
I cut the grass.
I do the lawn outside.
So I help.
Don't worry.
Anyway, Scott says it's time to let them go.
Let the curtains go.
To let something go means to agree not to have it anymore or to let someone else take it because you no longer need it or you no longer should have it.
He's going to let the curtains go.
Nancy says, what about this bag?
These are the children's old baby clothes.
Some people keep their children's clothes even after the children don't need them anymore.
I don't know why.
Anyway, Nancy has done this, and she says you can't just toss these.
To toss T-O-S-S means to throw something away, to get rid of something, to put something in the trash.
Nancy says these baby clothes have sentimental value.
They have such sentimental value, she says.
Sentimental S-E-N-T-I-M-E-N-T-A-L value is the feeling of wanting to keep an object because it has certain special memories for you.
It's not worth anything.
It's not like a gold ring that you can sell, but it has some sort of emotional feelings attached to it.
You have some emotional memories associated with it.
The first love note that your now husband or wife gave you.
That might be something that has sentimental value.
It's not valuable because the piece of paper is valuable, but what is associated with that piece of paper, what you have memories about.
Scott says you've kept a lot of the children's old clothes already, but we still have bags and bags of them in the attic.
The attic, A-T-T-I-C, is the very top of the house.
Many Americans live in houses that have more than one story, and even those that are just one story, one level.
Usually the house will have an attic.
It will have a storage area at the very top.
That's what Scott is referring to.
People sometimes use the attic as a place to store things, to keep boxes, for example.
Nancy says, yes, but they're so cute.
She doesn't want to get rid of her children's old clothes.
Scott says, however, it's time to put aside sentiment and do some spring cleaning.
To put aside.
A-S-I-D-E is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to separate something from a group because you want to use it for some particular purpose.
For example, my mother makes 10 cookies for us to eat, but she puts aside two of those for my father, who hasn't come home yet.
Usually my father wouldn't get any cookies if my mother made them, because we would eat them before he came.
So my mother would have to put them aside.
She would have to remove them, put them in another place so that we wouldn't eat them.
Scott says it's time to put aside sentiment.
We need to not worry about or not have the sentimental values about things and do some spring cleaning.
Spring cleaning is a time usually during the spring of the year, between the winter and the summer, when people go and they clean their house, they organize things, they get rid of things they don't need anymore.
Scott says, after all, we're donating them to a good cause for a good purpose.
Families visiting the thrift store can buy them for their own children.
We get a tax deduction and our items get a new life.
When you give money to a charitable organization in the United States, like a thrift store, you can take what's called a tax deduction.
You can take the value of that donation and use it to reduce the amount of taxes you owe at the end of the year.
Scott says it's a win-win for everybody.
A win-win W-I-N is a situation that benefits both people involved in the transaction in the exchange.
You get something, I get something.
It's win-win.
This is an expression that started to be used in the business world, I don't know, 20, 25 years ago.
Nancy says, I don't know about that.
I'm not sure.
Then she says, what?
You're not getting rid of those chairs, are you?
They still have a lot of life in them.
Now she sees that Scott is trying to donate some chairs.
She says these chairs still have a lot of life in them, meaning they're still useful.
We could still use them.
Scott says our garage is full of old furniture that we don't use.
I'm putting my foot down.
These have to go.
To put your foot down means that you are insisting.
You are saying, this is my decision.
I am not going to change it.
My wife said, we're going to the movies tonight.
And I say, no, I'm going to put my foot down.
We're not going to the movies.
Well, we, of course, went to the movies.
Scott says, these have to go.
Nancy says, but not those.
Scott says, yes, those and those and those.
He's pointing to all of the things they have to donate to the thrift store.
Scott says, this is my punishment for marrying a pack rat.
A pack P-A-C-K.
Rat R-A-T is a person who likes to keep everything, who doesn't throw anything away.
Old clothes, old papers, old books, all of these things they keep.
They don't give them away.
They don't donate them.
They don't throw them away.
They keep them.
That's what we call a pack rat.
Now let's listen to the dialogue this time at a normal speed.
That's the last bag.
Help me put these into the truck.
I want to get these to the thrift store before they stop taking donations for the day.
Hold on.
That bag has curtains in it.
I know they do.
These old curtains have been sitting around in the closet for ten years.
It's time to let them go.
But what about this bag?
These are the children's old baby clothes.
You can't just toss these.
They have such sentimental value.
You've kept a lot of the children's old clothes already, but we still have bags and bags of them in the attic.
Yes, but they're so cute.
It's time to put aside sentiment and do some spring cleaning.
After all, we're donating them to a good cause.
Families visiting the thrift store can buy them for their own children.
We get a tax deduction and our items get a new life.
It's a win-win for everybody.
I don't know about that.
What?
You're not getting rid of those chairs, are you?
They still have a lot of life in them.
Our garage is full of old furniture that we don't use.
I'm putting my foot down.
These have to go.
But not those.
Yes, those and those and those.
This is my punishment for marrying a pack rat.
We hope for a few minutes every day, you can put aside your cares and worries and listen to the wonderful scripts by our wonderful script writer, Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcast.
ESL Podcast English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
