Published: March 28, 2008 11:45 pm         

Donations, not garbage

CUMBERLAND — Sometimes trash to one person is treasure to another, and sometimes, trash is just trash.

“We don’t accept appliances because we don’t know if they actually work,” Kitty Willison, social services director at the Salvation Army on Somerville Avenue, said. “If they don’t, we have to be responsible for hauling them away.”

Willison said that this costs money for the group. She said that sometimes they have to be selective in what they take, looking through items before accepting them to ensure that they are still in good condition and can be re-sold.

The biggest problem, she said, are the unsolicited and unannounced donations that are dropped off at their property. Much of those, she said, tend to be the kinds of items her group cannot use and must be taken to the landfill.

Taking items to the landfill can get costly, according to Virginia Stotler, director of retail operations at Horizon Goodwill’s headquarters in Hagerstown.

“The funds we raise go toward the education and training for the disabled and disadvantaged,” Stotler said. “It’s very important that the items be able to be sold in stores. ... Sometimes items appear in the night, after hours. We do incur landfill costs, which take away from funding our program. We ask that that not happen, but unfortunately, it does sometimes.”

She said that the organization takes items like “gently used” clothing, small items and some furniture, like end tables, bookcases and bed frames.

Goodwill, she said, does not take used mattresses for sanitary reasons, but she said that these, like unusable clothes, are dropped of when the stores are not open and left to be disposed of by the organization.

While these two organizations accept clothing, Denny Youngblood of the Lonaconing Lions Club said that his group, when it holds a yard sale, does not accept clothes. Clothing does not tend to sell as fast as other items in a yard sale atmosphere, where people will look through it and often leave it wrinkled or unfolded and less appealing to customers.

He said that the club often will take these items to locations that can better deal with them, like the Goodwill.

The club, he said, is not holding a yard sale this year, but in the past has received sofas, which do not always sell as well as smaller items like knickknacks and pots and pans.

“Big couches and chairs don’t go well,” Youngblood said. “Sometimes, people give you that more so to get rid of it so they don’t have to dispose of it. We’ll turn them away on that kind of stuff.”

Contact Sarah Moses at smoses@times-news.com.