ReStore Relocates

Tom Wilkerson

Special to the Free Weekly

Washington County’s Habitat for Humanity ReStore was launched just three years ago, a hopeful nonprofit enterprise, wedged into a 15,000-square-foot warehouse. Now it’s moving into an air-conditioned 23,000-square-foot building and consolidating with Habitat’s executive and support staff at 1421 E. 15th St. in Fayetteville, former home of Hanna Candle Factory. The new store will open on Saturday.

“This is a good thing,” says ReStore General Manager Anita Zisner. “A very good thing.”

Let’s say you clean out your garage, remodel your house, downsize and simplify in any of the ways you do or — here’s a familiar scene — you have a garage sale and, well, not quite everything sells and there it all sits in your driveway late Saturday afternoon. Storm clouds gather. What to do?

Or in the commercial scenario, you’re Home Depot. Or Lowe’s. Or Marshalltown Tools. Or National Home Center. Or any local company that retails, wholesales or manufactures hard goods for consumers or the building trades. You’ve got inventory that hasn’t sold sitting on finite and valuable floor space and you gotta make room for incoming, faster-moving merchandise. Today.

In all of these cases, the imperative is the same: Get that stuff outta here!

The Habitat ReStore might be able to send their truck to pick up your things and you or your company can earn a tax deduction for your donation. The ReStore will then sell the stuff at a reduced price and send it back into the world for reuse; to provide utility, even beauty in a new setting.

Sales from the ReStore help build new Habitat for Humanity homes in Washington County, a nonprofit organization that’s helped more than 60 families in our community since it started in 1991. That may not sound like a lot of people, but when you think about the multiplier effect of parents and children together in homes, often their first, paying off the mortgage, property taxes and all the rest, it’s more than a warm fuzzy feeling. It’s a big shot of economic and social good in a tired old world that can use all the help it can get.