The gymnasium at Centennial CVI high school will be transformed over March break into the makings of a giant charity garage sale in support of Chalmers Community Services Centre, which will be open to the public on Saturday, March 16.
Between 9 a.m. And 3 p.m. from Monday to Friday next week, volunteers will be accepting donations and setting up the tales for the sale.
“We will be spending next week trying to get it all organized and to get everything priced up,” said Steve Kilby, who has been organizing the sale for 13 years.
When the sale started in 2007, it was in support of the one day a week programming Chalmers did at the time.
“Chalmers has changed a lot since then, it has grow as an organization,” said Kilby. “As things are now, we have something going on every day of the week from Monday to Friday. That was certainly not the case when the sale first started.”
Kilby said the sale usually brings in about $2,500 in net profit. The money raised will go toward purchasing food for the various programming that Chalmers offers.
“That was the main thought that I had when I started it, if we can raise money for one week’s worth of food, that is a good thing,” said Kilby.
This is the second year that Chalmers has used the cafeteria at Centennial.
“It’s a great big space with lots of tables," said Kilby.
The volunteers make an effort to go through the donations carefully and put out the best stuff, said Kilby.
“Mostly it’s household items of one kind or another — we can’t take anything too big,” he said. “Anything we fail to sell will go to one of the other local charities.”
Kilby said the Chalmers sale is traditionally the first big institutional garage sale of the year.
“It start’s off the season. There are some people out there who are garage sale junkies who really look forward to the season getting started with this sale,” he said. “We always have to hope for good weather because it’s in the middle of March.”
The organization tends to get a lot of donations from people moving or downsizing, said Kilby, but also from people who get started on their spring cleaning a little early.
“If you’re running a garage sale there is a notion that you’re helping people get rid of stuff that they don’t need or you are recycling stuff, finding a new home for it,” he said.
Kilby said the sale usually has a lot of old china and other antiques.
“It’s interesting to see the exotic or older stuff, but the main thing that will always move is the more mundane stuff that is just ordinary, simply because everybody has it or needs it or needs a new one.”
