Sale ready for North Kitsap shoppers

Published 7:00 am Wednesday, August 9, 2006

HANSVILLE — In the middle of summer’s endless frenetic string of single- and multi-family garage sales is the grand daddy of them all — the annual Hansville Rummage Sale.

In the weeks prior, shoppers have been preparing for the big weekend, practicing their moves in order to reach the good stuff before anybody else does. Feint right, dodge left, hurdle a sofa or three and so on.

The small army of Hansville volunteers in charge of the operation has also been busy, feverishly working to price and organize everything before Saturday, when the stampede of humanity begins.

“We started in December this year,” said personnel chairwoman Debra Bean, adding that next year, members of the Hansville Community Center might start in January, because this year the board collected too many items.

The HCC Board also decided to retain the plan of attack laid out by outgoing chairman Tony Atkinson in 2005, when he was in charge of the massive event. His ideas included giving items away to charities prior to the sale and pricing them as they arrived as opposed to doing it all in the weeks before the sale.

“The sale’s grown so large,” Atkinson said. “The two-week effort before the sale became way too large and difficult.”

In the week before this year’s rummage sale, volunteers are at the Hansville Community Center setting up and organizing the thousands upon thousands of items available, including a professional tanning bed, a two-man boat and a recumbent bicycle, all available in the auction area.

This year, with the completion of a parking lot at the center, furniture that was previously scattered on the western lawn with have a nicely paved space, complete with new tents to shield the merchandise from the weather, said publicity chairwoman Karen Burgan. The other articles for sale will be scattered — as neatly as possible — throughout the community center and its outlying buildings.

“Just name it, they got it,” said Kingston resident and sale regular Elvie Jones. Jones has been attending the Hansville Rummage Sale practically since it started, she said, and has missed only a few over the years.

“We’ve got a very good selection of art this year,” said chairman Howard O’Brien, adding that the choice of just about everything else is also excellent. “It’s coming along very well. We’ve just about got everything out of all our storage areas, and now we’re setting it all up.”

“We’ve been having fun, but it sure takes a village to run this sale,” Bean said, noting that by the end of the rummage sale weekend, more than 180 people will have helped out in some way, whether it be collecting, pricing or setting out the huge selection of second-hand items.

“You always come home with something, I never leave empty handed,” Jones said with a laugh.