After 50 years, everything and kitchen sink still on sale

The fellowship hall at First Lutheran Church will be bursting at the seams with bargains by this weekend. Shoppers will find bunches of books, stacks of shoes, piles of plates and even a fashionable hanging fern at the annual rummage sale set from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. Both days will be $5 bag days, said Mary Lou McCann, a longtime church member who has been in charge of the fundraiser in recent years. "They used to do a $5 bag day on Saturday, but this year we decided to do it both days of the sale," she said. "You're not going to find a better bargain." The history of the sale dates back at least 50 years, and they used to hold two sales a year, said McCann. "I don't know what we're going to do. It's hard to find help now, but somehow you just go on faith and it works out," she said. Volunteers will spend this week preparing for the sale. Duties include setting up tables, pulling donations out of the rummage sale room, sorting, folding and organizing. "And somehow, somehow it works," said McCann. She said they don't get big items donated like appliances and furniture, but there will be a row of wooden chairs lined up along a back wall this year McCann said they also sell a lot of clothes. "I think a lot of times at a personal garage sale, clothes probably don't sell. But people will come here and I think they look for clothes," she said. She said the $5 bag sale — purchase a bag for $5 and fill it with as much as it will hold — applies to most everything, unless it's otherwise marked. McCann said her team will also work with people if they only want to purchase a few things. "Not only do we want to make money for our charities, we also want to help the people that are buying stuff," she said. "Some are needy, some aren't, but some are very needy." The fundraiser usually brings in around $1,000, said McCann. The big sale There will be plenty to see come Friday including purses, foam curlers, piles of jigsaw puzzles, holiday decorations, toys and even a stainless steel double sink. "We have everything including the kitchen sink," McCann laughed. "That is our first kitchen sink." She said people are usually lined up waiting at the door on Friday morning. Over the course of the day, there will probably be about 100 people coming to shop. It takes about 20 volunteers to set things up, work the two days of the sale and then clean up afterwards. One of the perks, noted McCann, is getting to shop while you work. "That's one thing we find by working it, you see things first," she said. "It's like finding Waldo. There's so much stuff here you cannot see it all." Volunteer Diane Adler spent a few hours Tuesday sorting and folding clothes. A member of the church, she's been helping with the sale for several years. "I think it's interesting to see all the things that are collected by people, like some of their mementos from trips. And I love to look at the plates and dishes. They're gorgeous," she said. A bag she unloading contained a hodgepodge of items including a pair a black jeans, a sweater, several books, a string of Christmas lights and a package of knee high stockings which Adler thought might have to go into her bag along with a pair of shorts she found for her son. "I love to go to garage sales, but right now I need to have one of my own," she said. McCann said they often see some of the same shoppers come in year after year. "There used to be a mother and several of her young adult daughters would come in," she said. "They would just get all kinds of stuff, then they would go to one of the houses, either the mother's or the sibling's. And they'd pour out all this stuff and decide who was going to take what," she said. "So I really miss seeing them because we haven't seen them now for several years." McCann and her daughter also try to be environmentally friendly, recycling when they can. "And now you can even take clothing, material, and shoes for recycle," she said. McCann has contacted local charities like Chopin Hall, Hope House, the Free Store at Connections Church and Habitat for Humanity's ReStore to offer them whatever is left after the sale. "It's amazing how much stuff you have left over, but it's rare we ever save anything," she said. The sale is sponsored by Thrivent Financial which provides seed money which McCann uses to advertising, supplies they might need and lunch for her workers. Proceeds this year, which is decided on by the women's group of the church, will go to the ELCA Central Conference Seminary fund, Kentucky ELCA Disaster Relief and Generations of Hope Orphanage in Haiti.