Long gone are the days when shopping at a second-hand store might have been looked down upon. Nowadays, finding a gently used bargain or treasure at a thrift store is simply considered smart shopping.
“Thrifting,” as the practice is known, involves carefully perusing typically donated second-hand items, whether clothing, housewares, toys, sporting goods, furniture, or electronics. The thrill is in the hunt; the payoff in the bank account.
Local resale expert Bonnie Kallenberg, a past president of a national resale trade organization, says the second-hand market is growing 11 times faster than regular retail, with estimated national sales of more than $82 billion annually within the next three years.
Here in Putnam County, there are four primary non-profit thrift stores, including Putnam Christian Outreach and the Veteran’s Thrift Store, not far apart on Eatonton’s west side, and the Habitat for Humanity Restore and Goodwill Industries, almost directly across the road from one another alongside Hwy. 44 in the county’s eastern reaches.
Putnam Christian Outreach
• 151 Industrial Blvd., Eatonton
• 706-485-4066
Beyond all else, PCO Chair Rex Corlett stresses the “Christian” in Putnam Christian Outreach, explaining the store’s primary function remains as a Christian organization funding efforts to feed the hungry in Putnam County, regardless of religious, political, or social affiliation.
PCO has been around for 35 years and was created as a central location for food and clothing distribution to the needy “because previously every church in the county tried to do a little bit of that,” Corlett explains. “So, they all got together and said, ‘Let’s support a Putnam Christian Outreach.
Let’s put this organization together and we’ll send money to them and let them do it on a central basis.’ And that’s how we got started. It was about 35 churches that started this 35 years ago.”
These days, the store also funds a school backpack program for students in need who may be receiving free meals at school but might be at food risk on the weekends.
PCO packs backpacks with kid-friendly but nutritious foods that are distributed by teachers at Putnam County schools.
Corlett adds the store serves as PCO’s primary source of funding, not only for food initiatives but through the organization’s client assistance program it can help the needy with utility bills, rent payments and even medical needs on occasion.
“Our thrift store is not just a money maker for us; it’s so we can do our outreach,” Corlett repeats. “But it is an important resource for the community because otherwise a lot of people wouldn’t be able to buy those nice tennis shoes for their kids at reasonable prices.”
Eatonton Veterans Thrift Store
• 934 OakSt., Eatonton
• facebook.com/p/Eatonton- Veterans-Thrift-S tore-100067046913734
• 706-749-8477
Prominently situated alongside Hwy. 44 (Oak Street) heading east into town from the Eatonton bypass, the Veterans Thrift Store presents a well-organized, widely varied selection of gently used goods to Putnam County shoppers. Its proceeds directly benefit local veterans, store manager Nikki Barker says.
“We send the VFW a monthly check. We send the Putnam County Veterans Wall of Honor a monthly check, and then each year we meet and we see who else we’re going to support veterans-wise,” Barker explains.
“This year we sent about $10,000 to Warriors Ranch in Dublin, which is a veteran and emergency personnel farm where you can go and just decompress and talk with counselors and get animal interaction. It ended up being about $30,000 total that we gave to local and still-in-Georgia veterans’ programs.”
Barker says the store is dedicated to efficient use of all its donations, with good, saleable items going on the sales floor as quickly as possible and sporting color-coded tags so staff can identify approximately how long they’ve been on sale. Anything lasting over three months is either reduced in price or sent for recycling.
“If we can make a few dollars on anything and give somebody a deal, too, I mean it is keeping stuff out the landfill,” Barker says. “And we have two forms of recycling here.
We recycle textile materials that are stained, torn, or ripped, and as of right now, we’ve got about 17,000 pounds that we have donated this year and we’ve made about $2,000 off that. And metal recycling we’ve sent around 5,000 pounds that didn’t go into the dump, and we got around $800 there, so it all helps.”
Habitat for Humanity Restore
• 1027 Lake Oconee Pkwy., Eatonton
• habitat.org/ga/eatonton/hfh-putnam-inc
• 706-991-1600
Situated alongside Hwy. 44 near Lake Oconee in Putnam County’s east end since late 2008, the Habitat for Humanity (HFH) Restore will be moving around the corner late next spring to 866 Harmony Rd., about 1.3 miles away from its present location.
The current store has approximately 4,300 square feet of showroom floor space and tight quarters for delivery trucks behind the building, while the new location offers 10,000 square feet total with 8,000 square feet of showroom space and much easier access for drop-off and delivery vehicles, Putnam HFH Executive Director Murali Thiramul says. Although Habitat Restore does sell donated goods, it is not a thrift store in the traditional sense, Thiramul says.
He explains that HFH considers its stores to be mission-oriented, meaning they exist to promote Habitat’s primary mission to build affordable housing for qualified applicants.
The original HFH Restore business model focused on selling donated, excess building materials, such as lumber, windows, and kitchen or bath fixtures. These days, Restore focuses more on high-quality home furnishings and decorative items like artwork.
“Restores were founded for one purpose only, to promote and generate funding to build houses,” Thiramul states. “It gives us the opportunity to point to our ‘Wall of Fame’ and show the houses that Habitat has built locally and a way to pay to build more. It’s as simple as that.”
Goodwill Industries
• 1030 LakeOconee Pkwy., Eatonton
• 706-485-0245
The largest of Putnam County’s non-profit thrift stores, Goodwill features an approximate 8,000-square-foot showroom with a wide selection of clothing from babies to seniors, as well as housewares, toys, sporting goods, books, and electronics.
Among Goodwill’s biggest thrift retail promotions is its Color of the Week program, which designates a tag color each Monday putting all clothing items of that color on sale for $1.25 each all week, and on Wednesdays, a similar program puts all housewares of a designated color on sale for $1.99 for the week.
Goodwill of Middle Georgia and Central Savannah River Area Vice President of Retail Operations Christine Butler says the Putnam County location has been open for approximately 10 years and is one of the fastest-growing stores in the organization.
In addition to reselling donated items, Butler explains a major part of the store’s purpose is to provide job opportunities and career development services to the community.
“We have a job connection attached there so anybody can utilize all of our job and career services programs that particular location offers. And it’s free to the public,” Butler stresses. “So, if anyone in the area needs a job or they might need some sort of education, different things like that, we do offer some different programs to help with that.
“There may be some sort of program that we might have in our Macon area or our Augusta area, sometimes we have funded programs like forklift operating and different things like that,” she continues. “So, they may have to go somewhere else, but it would be free to them, so they wouldn’t have to pay anything for that. We have a lot of different services that we offer to the community. You just have to go in and talk to somebody.”