Comments (0) | |

Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009

Used clothing sale to raise funds for 48th soldiers

Local Realtors will hold a used clothing sale this weekend to raise money to mail care packages to Georgia soldiers in Afghanistan.

Organizers hope this “Soldiers Closet” will raise enough to send a couple hundred boxes to deployed members of the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade. They’re accepting clothing donations every afternoon this week at the former Lipson Fabrics store in the 2700 block of Riverside Drive.

Volunteers will be there from 3-6 p.m. today and Thursday and from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday.

The sale will be Saturday from 7 a.m.-1 p.m., with clothes selling for as little as $3. The clothes that were coming in Tuesday from local real estate offices looked to be in very good shape. Several suits, for men and women, were ready to be sold.

“There’s some nice clothes because we all dress up every day,” said Denny Jones, an organizer whose son is a Marine.

Donated clothes should be clean and on a hanger. Volunteers are organizing them by size and style, and they’ll be put on racks inside the old Lipson Fabrics.

“In these economic times, we figured this would be great,” said Sandra Davis, association executive for the Middle Georgia Association of Realtors.

Several local businesses have donated space or money to the effort, and the group will accept cash donations from the public as well.

The group has already collected enough items to fill as many as 200 care packages, Davis said.

But it will cost $11 a box to mail the packages overseas, she said.

Items for the packages run the gamut — suntan lotion, games, sunflower seeds.

“Random stuff,” Davis said. “Stuff that they would want.”

To contact writer Travis Fain, call 744-4213.