My Seton Store Story

This week, we got a break from our typical jobs to prepare the store for Christmas. We have slowly been rolling out Christmas merchandise since September, but the holidays are in full swing at the Seton Store now that Halloween has passed and November has begun. Maggie and I have been working hard to help this shift go smoothly. Some fake trees that Maggie and I put together. Throughout the year, people donate Christmas items, which go into storage in a closet in the sorting room. Maggie and I have been responsible for sorting and tagging 25 packed boxes worth of items. Each week, merchandise is tagged with a different color to indicate how long it has been on the floor. Using these colored tags, we have split the merchandise and planned which items will go on the floor and when in the coming weeks. This will help us get as much merchandise on the floor as quickly as possible, with the ultimate goal of selling these items and opening up storage space in the sorting room. A bulletin b...

This week, Maggie and I spent much of our time sorting and tagging clothes, as we usually do. Luckily, we were not bombarded with clothes like we have been over the last few weeks, so we were able to tidy up a bit. Specifically, we sorted through a large pile of summer clothes by type and size to make them easier to store and put out next year. We also put together some displays on the floor to get much of the Christmas stuff out of the sorting room and make room for other items.  Boxes of summer clothes that we sorted. Having passed the mid-point of this internship, I have found that the tasks can get kind of monotonous. Even though I love the people that I work with, sorting, tagging, and putting clothes out on the floor for hours on end each week can get very repetitive. To break this up, Maggie and I do our favorite jobs: taking out the trash and emptying dehumidifiers. (We especially enjoy getting to throw away glass because we can smash them in the dumpster.)  All of the...

 This week, Maggie and I assembled a 7.5-foot-tall Christmas tree and redressed our mannequins to fit the new scene. I had so much fun getting into the Christmas spirit for a little bit (even though it is fairly early) as we decorated. I could tell that the clients were enjoying it too, as many of them complimented us on our work and offered words of encouragement. For the rest of the week, we sorted, tagged, and hung clothes. Our little mannequin family. Over break, Maggie and I discussed plans for our Seton Store pop-up shop and decided to reschedule it for later in the semester. In our initial planning stage, Maggie and I decided, along with the Seton Store’s Director of Operations, that we should have three full racks of clothing for sale. At this point, however, we have only pulled enough clothing to fill one rack. It has proven to be a bit difficult to find clothing that the majority of college students would be interested in. The majority of Seton Family Store clients and ...

Last week, Maggie and I had a lot of fun getting to dress the mannequins on the store floor. Some of the pieces of the perfect outfits that we picked out did not fit the mannequins well, so we had to improvise by using belts, rubber bands, and clothespins. We had to be careful when changing the mannequins because they were ridiculously anatomically accurate. This made the entire job funnier for us and the rest of the staff because Maggie and I had to do our best to successfully change the clothes on the mannequins without being completely obscene. Some of the mannequins we styled. This week, we have been doing our normal jewelry and clothing duties. Today, however, we got absolutely bombarded with clothing donations, so much so that we needed to enlist help from office workers from the Outreach Office. It was definitely intimidating to see how many clothes needed to be sorted and tagged. We did what we could in the short hours we were working, but it did not seem to make a dent in the ...

This week, the Seton Store did not receive many donations, so we were able to tidy up the sorting room and clean the store. Maggie and I did odd jobs during our shifts this week, including sorting, folding, and bundling linens, wiping down all of the shelves in the store, making countless trash and recycling runs, emptying the dehumidifiers, and making sure that all of the clothes were organized on the racks correctly. I am thankful that it was a pretty laid-back week because we finally had time to get the sorting room and store floor in good order.  Racks of clothing that we sorted into the correct sizing. On Wednesday, I had to call out sick due to a migraine. I received very sweet emails from the Director of Operations and the Volunteer Coordinator wishing me a speedy recovery. When I returned today, the other volunteers were very happy to see me and asked me how I was feeling. I am very blessed to be volunteering in such a supportive environment.  Afghan throw blankets t...

Many of the regular staff members were out this week, so Maggie and I had to fill in the gaps and work at different stations. Of the five stations (clothing, jewelry, linens, accessories, and household), a total of three of them were unmanned and would be for multiple days. I have become very accustomed to working with clothes, so it was certainly interesting to branch out.  A stand of necklaces that Maggie and I tagged and priced. We spent most of our time this week working at the jewelry station, tagging, pricing, and hanging various pieces of jewelry. A couple of pieces needed small repairs, so we fixed what we could using some tools and parts from the broken jewelry bin. As I looked through the broken jewelry bin, I decided to make some completely new pieces of jewelry using parts from various other pieces. I love crafting and was given complete creative control by the staff to make any pieces of jewelry I wanted. I really enjoyed making things that were useful out of parts tha...