Inside Tiny Schoolhouse, Everything Old Is New Again

Clothing-donation bins are often viewed as where wardrobes go to die.

Diane Formoso brings them back to life.

Inside a tiny, old schoolhouse, the Caring For Kids founder and her team of helpers sort endless piles of clothing to distribute to various organizations. Last year, they sent 785 heaping garbage bags to Caring For Kids' Ready to Learn Fair, gave another ton to the Springbrook Mobile Food Bank and made regular drop-offs to the Lakes FISH Food Bank.

In what should come as no surprise to anyone who has met Formoso, everything is methodically arranged in categories by size, gender and style.

And everything finds a home.

Men's dress clothing goes to the Phoenix Housing Network and women's, to Clover Park Technical College; costumes are sent to the Boys and Girls Club and baby clothes, to Alfretta House.

Then there are the clothing-bank orders that constantly pour in from counselors in the Clover Park School District. Formoso makes up bags with socks, underwear, clothing and shoes, and delivers them to the schools. She averages about 100 a month during the school year.

 “We'll take anything,” said June Williams, who spends an estimated 12 hours a work at the clothing bank. “We have places for everything.”

Formoso nodded emphatically. “We can get rid of anything better than anyone.”

On this day, there was actually walking room in the old schoolhouse that once housed Custer Elementary – it sits on the edge of the school's property – but Formoso said that closer to the Ready to Learn Fair, which serves an estimated 2,600 children every August, the piles are “taller and wider than we are.”

Among the items being sorted were women's tops, men's pants and tiny baby clothes.

The latter is a favorite of Lois Hosking, Williams' mom, who often accompanies her to the clothing bank.

“I like to do these,” she said, holding up a blue onesie with white stars. “They're so cute.”

Not that she's picky, though.

“I just never stop,” she said. “I keep going.”

Such stamina is necessary for a never-ending project. There is always need – and there are always clothes.

Formoso regularly picks them up from a red collection bin shaped like a schoolhouse in the lobby of district headquarters, and she also raids schools' lost-and-found collections at the end of the year. They start picking them up on the last day of school, and some schools have more than 10 bags worth of unclaimed goods.

Amassing so many articles of clothing can make for some long days.

 “We have decided that we hate clothes,” Formoso said with a laugh. “We love to give them out and we have to have them … but we hate them.”

Volunteers take clothes home to wash and then package them in white bags for the appropriate destination.

“It's a lot of laundry,” Williams said.

Some of that laundry ends up on the other side of the schoolhouse, in Formoso's meticulously arranged storage area for clothing-bank orders. There are hundreds of pairs of shoes that she buys by the carful from Payless Shoe Source, each labeled and bound together. Racks are stuffed with winter coats – one of the organization's biggest outreach efforts – and the shelves overflow with clothing in every size.

Even with such a large supply, Formoso rattles off a list of current needs: women's tops in size medium; girls' in sizes 6, 8 and 10; girls' shoes in sizes 12 and 13; toddler clothes in 18 and 24 months.

“To put these orders together, (the challenge) isn't getting them out, it's getting everything together,” she said.

Formoso admits that the best thing people can donate is money so she can purchase exactly what is needed at the time.

Besides, she said, “people will spend a lot on an item to donate, and for the amount they spend, I can get three.”

Even so, they won't turn anything away – within reason.

“There's a lot of garbage that kids would never wear in a million years,” Formoso said.

Anything stained or with huge holes – Hosking punctuated the guidelines with a dismayed look at a severely torn Hawaiian shirt – is not accepted. They do minimal mending, but volunteers will turn holey jeans into quilts to donate to Caring For Kids' annual dinner and auction.

And apparently, Formoso said, pointing at the ceiling, “We even take cobwebs in.”

The clothing bank's location is both a blessing and a curse to those that work there.

Prior to moving into the 1932 schoolhouse, the clothing bank was housed in the old Park Lodge Elementary, which was torn down in the mid 1990s.

Now, they operate out of a tiny building with a roof that leaked twice this winter – “and we had just cleaned the rug,” Williams said wryly – and boarded-up windows. About five years ago, a group of kids broke in and sprayed fire extinguishers everywhere. Fortunately, though, it was right after the Ready to Learn Fair, so there wasn't much there.

Since then, they have developed a strategy to keep kids from Custer and adjoining Hudtloff Middle School at bay.

“We tell the kids the place is haunted,” Williams said with a laugh. “And it works.”

Challenges aside, Formoso isn't complaining.

“The place is old and falling apart, but it's ours,” she said. “Everyone knows it's bad, but we manage – as long as we can do our work.”