Ladies of Charity begin the summer with sunshine

Friday, Jul. 29, 2022

Special to the Intermountain Catholic

At a wedding recently, I heard a guest say that she always stuffs June full of fun to make sure that, by the Fourth of July, her family has already enjoyed a lot of summer activities before the summer is half over. (Yes, that woman is an incredible person.)

This year, the Salt Lake City chapter of the Ladies of Charity used that philosophy for an all-new fundraiser idea. We decided to have a yard sale. When we first talked about it, some concerns were expressed that we most likely wouldn’t raise much money. But the other side of the coin was, what if there is another COVID surge in the fall, causing our usual indoor fundraiser to be cancelled once again? If that happens, we won’t have much money to support our causes. And one of our most important causes is assisting 27 families who don’t quite have enough money to support themselves. That’s all it took for everyone to be 100 percent on board. Yard sale it was!

One of our ladies donated her front yard as the location, and the process began. Over a period of three weeks, we gathered gently used items and prepped by pricing, sorting, lugging and laughing. The big day dawned on June 4, and ladies were there early to meet the crowd with donations from a “mink” coat to handcrafted wall décor. Shoppers were all ages. One 20-something woman said it was the best yard sale she’d ever been to! Another shopper found items to put in backpacks for school-aged children. 

Afterward, the clean-up crew organized what wasn’t sold for donations to local charities. In the end, we made over $1,300. We gave our goodwill ledger a boost, and we started the summer using the sunshine to make sure we had funds to help others with their rainy days.

Great way to start the summer – not only warm on the outside, but on the inside, too.