Thrift Shop a Haven During Recession

In her short time as the manager of the St. Peter’s Thrift Shop on Throckmorton Street, Sylvia Johnson has seen how a recession can change everything.

Manager Sylvia Johnson points to the overwhelming amount of donations in one of the store rooms, a place where she hangs onto good-condition winter clothing until it's in-season.

Since taking the helm as the manager last November, Johnson has seen daily sales increase over $100 a day, from about $215 in July of last year to about $350 a day this past July. Demand for the store’s high-quality, low-priced secondhand goods moved her to open the store an extra two days a wek, including Saturdays, so more community members could get there to shop.

Thrift Shop volunteer Jeanette Racer sorts children's clothes in the store room. Since starting at the store, Racer says she now attends church services sometimes, too.

“I sometimes come twice a day,” said Dilania Bargeron, as she shuffled through clothing for herself and her children. “Sometimes you can come in the morning, and then come back later in the afternoon and find something totally different.”

Donations keep the store running, Johnson explained. Two store rooms in the back of the shop house dozens of garbage bags of donated clothing, blankets, shoes, and homewares. Volunteers from the church, the community, and area outreach programs sort through donations all day.

“A lot of stuff we get still has tags on it, brand new,” Johnson said. “Other stuff we get that’s not in such good condition, we send to the mission pile, and it goes to developing countries.”

Tags or no-tags, all pants are just $3 a pair, all shoes are $1 a pair, and most children’s clothing is two pieces for fifty cents. The store runs monthly “bag sales” where customers can fill up brown shopping bags with as much clothing as possible for a flat fee of $7, and if Johnson knows of a community member in dire need, she’s happy to give away the necessary items.

A regular customer and a volunteer cashier chat about purchases.

Customer Terry Flowers of Eatontown comes into the store about once a week, when business takes him through the area.

“I mostly buy men’s suits and ladies’ clothes to distribute to the folks at my church,” Flowers said, explaining that parishioners at his Seventh Day Adventist church in New York are in need of good clothes to wear to services.

On Tuesday, the store swarmed with little children, middle-aged browsers, and elderly shoppers who stopped to chat with the volunteers working the register. A man going on a trip to Mexico has arranged for a special “bag sale” of his own to bring clothes and goods to impoverished Mexican citizens there.

“We get all types of people in here,” Johnson said. “People come in and explain that they used to shop at Macy’s, but can’t afford it anymore, it’s just too expensive.”

The thrift store is run by St. Peter’s Episcopal Church down the road, which offers many outreach missions to community members, including daily lunches and weekly hot dinners open to the public.

They also help oversee the Open Door food bank, located two doors down from the thrift store. Habitat for Humanity, and independent non-profit located in-between the two St. Peter’s outposts, often shares furniture with the thrift store and takes large, unwanted household items off their hands.

The St. Peter’s outreach missions have helped many in the community get back on their feet, Johnson explained, pointing to various framed letters from those she had personally helped through the store’s and church’s efforts.

“This volunteer here,” Johnson said, gesturing towards Tammy O’Donnell, a middle-aged woman working in the sorting room, “I found her homeless on a bench in Freehold not too long ago. I brought her home to my house, we had dinner, and she and her husband stayed for three days.”

“Yes she did,” O’Donnell agreed. “Now we live in the Marlboro Motel, we’re looking to get into some low-income housing, we’re working, and we go to church twice a week and help out here. She’s an angel.”

The stories of helpfulness abound in the thrift shop, Johnson said, and they’re doing as much as ever in the recession. The extra money from the store goes straight into the Church’s other outreach missions, she said, which allows the Church to reach many more people.

“We help when people are struggling,” Johnson said of the outreach. “It’s a gift.”

The St. Peter’s Thrift Shop is open from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. weekdays and Saturday, and is located at 49 Throckmorton Street.