In July, Emily convinced me to head up a color guard fundraiser. Things are easier if you know more about them, so I thought that a rummage sale would be right up my alley!
After clearing it with her director, I contacted the church here in the village, and we found a three-day opening in October!
I posted for people to save their donations, and then waited, and collected things in my mudroom, and waited, and then it was finally time! During the break, the color guard members helped paint some signs (some of which I borrowed from a friend and covered with paper.)
On Wednesday, Emily and I made 7 batches of chocolate chip walnut banana bread for the bake sale portion of the sale! One we kept for us, and two of them I cut up and put on to plates, in case there were people who just wanted a taste, and not a loaf.
Thursday morning found us emptying my car, and reloading it with rummage sale donations!
Ultimately, we fit all the donations in my car, but the signs had to go in my mom's car. This worked out well, because she and the director were the ones who went to put them up to encourage traffic.
Thursday at the start of the collection window, I had tons of help! My mom was there, as was the director, four of the color guard members, including Emily, four NHS volunteers, who were working for hours, and Grace and Juliet!
Everyone worked so hard to ready the space, and then sort, sort, sort the donations! We got some amazing donations from color guard families, band families, and distant color guard relations. The donations were amazing, the workers were amazing, but around six we lost everyone except for Emily and Grace. And then, right before seven, we got two of the most amazing donation loads, but there were only three of us sorting them all out!
We were so thankful for the donations, because the sale looked so full and awesome, but we did not get to leave until almost nine!
The next morning, we had a small line waiting for us to open, but we were waiting for my mom to arrive, so that I wasn't the only adult in the building, with all of the seed money.
My banana bread was the only baked donation at the start of the sale, so we had some snacks available for purchase, though, it was mostly workers (aka my children) who were the primary patrons.
Our prices were pretty good I thought, fill a bag for $5, and a box for $10! At noon we dropped the price to $3 a bag, and $6 a box. It was slooooooooooooooow for most of the day. I had some more NHS volunteers, and a few color guard girls who brought some bake sale donations. My mom left midday, because she was flying out to Texas, but it was so slow that we felt well-staffed.
At the end of day one we ended up giving away a few loaves and slices of bread, because I had another round at home in the refrigerator, but we kept the cookies for day two.
On day two, we started off with $1 a bag and $3 a box, but the box was theoretical, in that they could shop with a box, but we moved it all to bags to load into their vehicles, because we needed the boxes for the end of our sale. We had another color guard mom, several of the color guard members stopped by, and we had one steadfast NHS volunteer, who was there every single day!
When I rolled out of bed that morning, I posted in my local free group that we would have everything free from 12-1. So, at the end of the sale, we started with the clothing, loading up my car with boxes of clothes and shoes to put in the local donation bin, one block from the church. Grace came with me, and everyone else was boxing up the remnants, while we had several families come to shop for free!
Billy came up to help put tables away and we did what we could to put the building back just as we found it. The other color guard mom grabbed the sheets and blankets to donate to the dog shelter. Billly and the girls drove home with all of the administrative items (like money, extra food, trash, etc.) I finished sweeping, locking doors, and turning off lights. Then I made one *single* trip to the thrift shop with the rest of the leftovers.
On my way home I collected all the signage for the sale, but I beat the rain! We unloaded the van, threw out all the accumulated trash, and started putting things away. When we finally had all the things put away, we found that we'd earned almost $500! While much of that was a sizeable donation from my mom, I was still impressed by how generous people were at such a slow sale.
We didn't quite reach our goal of $700, but if we hold it year after year, maybe we can improve our foot traffic! I will say it was a physically draining experience, and I'm not ready to repeat it at the moment, but maybe by next summer!
later days
edit 10-27-25: backdated for continuity.
No comments:
Post a Comment