‘By far the best year’

Annual rummage sale benefits library

RANDOLPH – Peggy Leiting found herself tired but grateful Monday morning as she paused to reflect on the success of the Lied Randolph Public Library’s annual rummage sale.

The annual sale gives local residents a chance to clean out their closets for a good cause, and also brings people into the community each year to search for good deals.

Tables fill the city auditorium, often heaped full of donated items, making the scale of the sale quite large.

“Without everyone’s donations, we absolutely could not do it,” said Leiting, Randolph’s library diretor. “It’s pretty interesting to see the things that come in.”

The sale is a massive undertaking with about two dozen volunteers who sort donated items, and work during sale hours. Volunteers put in well over 200 hours with some working long 12-hour days leading up to the sale and others able to work an hour here or there, Leiting said.

The volunteers were buoyed by working for a good cause - to bolster the library’s youth programming. This year, proceeds will be used for a special activity during Randolph’s Community Fair and also to bring in an author/illustrator for the library’s summer reading program.

“This was by far the best year,” said Leiting, the library director, with sales totaling about $7,000. With most items priced at $2 each, the volume of goods sold over the weekend is quite remarkable, she said.

This year, the sale’s hours were extended earlier on Friday morning and Leiting counted about 80 people at the door waiting at 9 a.m. when the doors opened.

Goodwill of Grand Island came to Randolph Monday to pick up the sale leftovers.

“They’re taking it all and what they don’t use, they’ll recycle,” Leiting said.

The annual rummage sale - a staple in the community for the last 20-plus years - was almost canceled this year after Norfolk’s Salvation Army representatives were unable to pickup any remaining sale items. However, the library was able to secure Goodwill as a vendor and this year’s rummage sale was able to move forward.