Hope's Treasures

This week's post was inspired by a Facebook conversation that I recently had. A friend of mine was cleaning out her house and posted that she had taken five bags of clothes and shoes to a nearby Planet Aid box.

While her heart was in the right place, those donated items aren't doing anyone any good. The only people that Planet Aid helps is themselves. So because I'm not afraid to be service-y, I figured I'd use this week's column to talk about my favorite place to donate: Hope's Treasures.

Hope's Treasures is part of the Good Shepherd Alliance, which, according to their website, "exists to provide women, children, and families in crisis with emergency shelter, food, clothing, children's programs, counseling and transitional housing for pregnant women so as to empower them to become self-sufficient in the shortest-possible time."

When you donate to Hope's Treasures, you know that the items you donate are going to do someone some good. Residents of GSA's shelters receive vouchers to shop for the items they need, and the proceeds from items sold to the general public go to support GSA's programs. Anything that isn't sold is then donated to third-world countries.

Even though I had made several donations to Hope's Treasures' new store in Leesburg after my recent move, I had never actually been inside. What I found was a spacious, clean, well-organized store that had a wide variety of items, in mostly good condition.

Everything you would find there is typical of any other thrift store: toys, clothes, shoes, electronics and furniture. However, one thing that caught my eye in the clothes is that a fair amount of them were brand new.

The store in the outlet mall donates unsold merchandise to Hope's Treasures, so the racks contained new-with-tags baby outfits at a small fraction of the price for which you would pay otherwise.

The store itself is also quite large, which is certainly a benefit over many other thrift stores I've been in, which are packed to the gills with an overwhelming amount of stuff. Hope's Treasures is easy to navigate, and everything is visible, so you're not hunting through piles upon piles.

While there wasn't a ton of furniture, some of it was pretty decent quality. There was a mid-century armchair in particular that I had my eye on, but have absolutely no room for.

While the Leesburg store, located by Del Rio's is the newest, you can find Hope's Treasures locations all over Loudoun County. There's a Sterling location as well as an Ashburn store. Ashburn also has a separate store just for kids' clothing and toys.

Regardless of where you shop or donate, you know that you're doing a service for people right here in Loudoun.