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NORTH CENTER — St. Ben’s Kids Garage Sale returns this Saturday with cool, cute and outright weird items for sale.
“This is the 11th annual garage sale and I’ve been a lead on the sale for the past six years,” Jennifer Patras said, co-chair of school’s garage sale. “It started off very small in one of our corner buildings on campus. And now we fill every corner of our gym, it’s bursting at the seams with donations.”
The sale begins at 8 a.m. at the school’s gym at 3900 N. Leavitt St. Admission is $1 and items on sale will include books, movies, music, toys, baby clothes, Halloween costumes and much more. And from noon to 1 p.m. the sale will have a “power hour” where admission will be free and items will be 50 percent off.
Credit: Image courtesy Facebook/Home & School Association, St. Benedict Preparatory School.Items at the sale are donated by the community and Patras says a small army of dedicated volunteers reviews, organizes and, if necessary, cleans every item.
Items that aren’t up the standards for St. Ben’s garage sale are recycled to local charities, like the Society of St. Vincent de Paul as wells as homeless and women’s shelters. Items left over from the sale on Saturday will also be donated to other charities.
“For the most part it’s a lot of kids stuff we get. We’ve been donated things like a giant plastic race car bed, we’ve gotten that a few times, or a Justin Bieber blanket,” Patras said. “We have a lot of furniture and strollers. We get everything you’d need from being pregnant to having a teenager. Anything you can think of, it comes through our garage sale.”
The funds raised by the garage sale are used for a teacher grant program at the parish’s school.
“So a teacher will apply for a grant for a specific need to the classroom for what they feel would enhance the curriculum for the children,” Patras said. “We ask teachers to think of items that would provide an ongoing benefit. In the past funds have been used to buy a video camera for students to practice public speaking, projectors for for classrooms, an iPads for each preschool classroom.”
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