Thift Shop Lesson No. 1: Tame the Pile

Last Thursday, Judy Stone took me to the back of Yesterday's Rose, the nonprofit thrift shop she manages on Main Street in Fairfax. Judy wanted to show me a part of the store that's off-limits to customers. I wasn't a customer that day, she kept reminding me; I was an employee.

I'd already helped at the checkout, bagging the purchases that cashier Claire Guilliams rang up. It was "Thrifty Thursday" -- 50 percent off clothes and shoes -- and customers were snapping up sweaters and winter coats.

Yesterday's Rose is far from a typical thrift shop. It may be the nicest thrift shop I've ever been in: 13,000 square feet of gently used stuff, all of it neatly arranged.

And idiosyncratically arranged. Judy, 60, long ago decided that, for various reasons, it's impossible to organize clothing by size. Instead, the garments at Yesterday's Rose are color coded: all the white T-shirts hang together. Ditto all the purple tops and blue tops and pink tops.

That sense of order at Yesterday's Rose may be why it's so popular both with shoppers and with various elements of the judicial system. Ever wonder what people do when they're sentenced to community service? Some of them go to Yesterday's Rose to spend their time doing whatever Judy tells them to do. It sure beats picking up trash by the side of the road.

"No two days are the same here," said Judy, who loves the human dramas that play out in her domain.

There are the customers who are unclear about the concept of a thrift store, such as the lady who came up holding a pair of shoes and asked, "Is there any chance you have these in another size?" Or the regulars who stop by every single day to check out what's new.

Because there's always something new. Yesterday's Rose is like a vast assembly line, and the raw material is the Pile -- what Judy had pushed open the swinging doors at the back of the store to show me. This is the donated merchandise: bags of clothes, housewares, furniture, toys, books . . .

The Pile is the fuel that makes the thrift shop run. But the only way you can have a thrift shop as nice as Yesterday's Rose is if you're ruthless with the Pile.

"If you start taking stuff that's all torn and ratty, then you get the reputation of being a dump," Judy said.

When people bring donations to the back door, they're greeted by a sign that lists everything Judy doesn't want, a list that includes: "Worn or mildewed upholstered items. Furniture that is broken or in ill repair. Toys & games with broken and/or missing parts. Ripped, torn, damaged or stained clothing. Yard, church & school sale leftovers."

The Pile workers are as efficient as the insects that strip the flesh from dead animals and recycle nutrients in the forest. I helped George Karr, 59, a lifelong Fairfax resident, make the first cut. When the doorbell rang, I'd open the door and take the donation. Clothes went into one 10-foot-high pile. Everything else went into another. Stuff that was obviously trash was thrown away, though clothing and shoes are sold for rags or donated to Africa.