Et Cetera Shop volunteers love their jobs

BLUFFTON — There's more to volunteering at a thrift store than sorting clothes, stocking shelves and running a cash register. At the Et Cetera Shop in Bluffton, Janette Reineke fills the role of window artist for the nonprofit. Everything she uses to design and decorate the three large window out front has been donated. "I think I just said one time something about let's make a display or something, and then it took off from there. And then of course nobody else wants to do it," she laughed. And Tim Byers creates and cares for a Volunteers Garden behind the North Main Street store. He took a space that was a gravel patch and added six truckloads of compost and donated plants. "This is where all the volunteers come in and it just never felt like a fuzzy warm place to come in," he explained. "We want people to have a smile when they come in or go out." Chrissy Lugibihl has managed the shop since 2003. The thrift store is a partner nonprofit business with Book ReViews and Ten Thousand Villages. The three operate under the umbrella of the Mennonite Central Committee, with most of the profits going to support the organization's worldwide relief work. She is the only paid employee while about 90 volunteers from the area sort, price and work the cash register. Several special education classes also come in during the school year and hang up clothes on Fridays, Reineke said. Everyone has a job, she added, and everyone loves their job. "It's a fellowship," said Byers. "We're a faith-based business, but we're just a bunch of nice people that like being here and like being with each other." Born and raised in Bluffton, Reineke retired from teaching in 2000 and soon after started helping at the thrift store. It was then at its former location — now home to Ten Thousand Villages and Roots by Strattons. "It was very small and had like two windows," she recalled. Reineke said she's not sure now whether the window dressing duties were her idea or someone else's. "I have a lot of fun but I have themes usually for my windows. And I start collecting for the themes two to three months before they're installed in order to get enough stuff," she said. And she definitely needs more props. The new store has three large windows that measure 5-feet by 8 feet. Reineke said Denny and Jane Edinger built the windows. The current theme is "Hello Fall" so the display features all things related to autumn like the first day of school, football and scarecrows. The windows are changed out once a month. Reineke said it can take 2½ to 3 hours to dress the windows. "I start my windows thinking of them as a blank canvas. And then I try to think of a scene to go in each window that carries out the theme. So I kind of look at it as a painting with things because you have to have a theme in my opinion. Otherwise it's just stuff," she said. Reineke puts a little sign in the window that tells when the windows will next be changed. The items she uses can then be purchased the next day. "They cannot buy them before. They try to. No, nobody can have anything before the date," she said. Sometimes shoppers really want an item from the window, according to Byers, who sits by the front door and greets people. "I'm not exaggerating, 10 times in a four-hour shift somebody will ask, how can I buy that thing in the window?" he said. People have even offered to pay him double for window items. "I say no, I'd really like to take that deal but that's not how we do it," he said. Another time a woman tried to lower her daughter over the partition to get a doll that was not for sale. Byers also caught someone trying to jimmy the gate. "I scolded her because I said, you know the routine here. She was just going to get in there and take it," he said. Reineke said she enjoys decorating the windows. "It's just part of my creativity that I use in the windows because after I quit teaching, I was teaching the elderly art. And then because of the pandemic, that ended. So now the windows are my outlet," she said. The Volunteers Garden gives Byers a chance to use his imagination as well. In addition to caring for the garden, he makes flowers from old records that he bakes, paints and then attaches to a wooden dowel. By baking the records, they all curl differently, he said. Baking takes as little as 45 seconds. A Nerf ball or golf ball he's cut in two creates the center with everything he uses being a donation. Byers retired as an assistant professor of education at Bluffton University in 2020. He came on as a board member at the Et Cetera Shop five or six years ago. "We're in our 70s now so we're looking for things to fulfill our lives a little bit," he said. He and his wife, Brenda, volunteer at the shop together. She's fills in as a a cashier at least two days a week. The couple are also in charge of puzzles and games. But Byers really enjoys the garden, he said. "I'm sort of a volunteer gardener. When things come up, I let them come up where they are a lot of times and I build landscape around them. And that's what I did out here," he said. After adding compost, he brought some of his own plants from home for the 11-foot by 25-foot garden. "A friend, Marge Hilty, passed away a couple of years ago and she was an elderly lady but knew more about flowers than any other book I've read. I dug up a lot of her perennials before she passed, and some of those are here and some of those are at our house," he said. Volunteers from the shop have also brought in plants, he said. "It truly is a volunteer garden because there's stuff I don't know where it came from," said Byers. There's milkweed for monarch butterflies along with tomatoes, a pepper, raspberries and onions, along with various flowers like one tall Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate flower that's also known as Prince's Feather. An old reel lawn mower — a gift from one of the volunteers who used it in his own flower bed for 30 years — is now at home in the garden. There's also a set of chimes, a trellis and a large decorative frog that Byers likes to move around occasionally. "I like props. Like Janette, I like to use weird things in weird ways, and I spraypaint it if it's not moving," he laughed. Donations are accepted from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays. The thrift shop is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 1-5 p.m., and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.