Summer Clean Up: Saturday is Donation Day for 73rd Annual Ladies Board Rummage Sales

Time to get the closets, basements and garages cleaned out. And help out your community hospital at the same time.

Saturday, July 9, is the first of four Donation Days for the 73rd Annual Ladies Board Rummage Sale, set for October14 and 15 at Morven Park in Leesburg. Semi-trailers will be waiting Saturday at the Leesburg hospital, 224 Cornwall Street, and at the Lansdowne hospital, 44045 Riverside Parkway, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Last year, said the sale’s co-chairmen, Sue Clewin and Lisa Cromwell, they filled six semis with everything from furniture to clothing to carpets to small appliances and artwork. The goal this year is to up that number to seven and to have the most successful Rummage Sale ever.

But before that happens, the donations have to appear.

Local residents in the past few years who were disbursing their parents’ estates, or downsizing themselves, have donated the entire contents of their homes. Trucks and work crews are available to help with those large donations.

Furniture was the biggest seller last year, raising nearly $20,000. The French Room – the only venue with a real floor, where style-conscious shoppers find designer clothing and accessories – followed at $15,000.

“Art work always sells well,” Cromwell said, and anything hunt-scene related brings top dollar. Put a fox in or on it, and it sells even better.

Cromwell remembered a diary, in another language, sold one year for $100. An old bottle last year, still marked at 50 cents from its unsuccessful appearance at a yard sale, went for nearly $500 – an astute volunteer recognized it as a true collectible and priced it accordingly.

Last year’s sale, Clewin said, brought in $155,207, the highest total since the ladies started supporting their fledgling rural hospital in 1912.

Clewin and Cromwell have co-chaired the huge undertaking for at least the last five years, and Clewin has her eye on her 11-½ year old daughter Mary Catherine for the 2028 renewal. The Rummage Sale is the biggest fundraiser of the year, Cromwell said. With the addition of funds raised by the Twice as Nice Thrift Shop in Leesburg, the Gift Shop at the Lansdowne Hospital. The Lights of Love and the Silent Auction preceding the Rummage sale, the Ladies Board donates up to $300,000 each year to Inova Loudoun Hospital projects – as the ladies suggested in 1912, “anything which might contribute to the well-being and comfort of the patients.”

This year, $102,300 went to scholarships for 64 students.

Early Bird tickets – for $5, eager shoppers can cruise the aisles from 8 to 9 a.m. Oct 14, before the doors open to everyone – raised nearly $5,000 for the Polly Clemens Nursery Fund, and made it possible for the ladies to donate some important equipment that hadn’t made it into the budget – a pediatric pulse oximeter, a “bili” (for bilirubin) blanket for children with jaundice, ophthalmoscopes and otoscopes.

Since passage of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, toys cannot be resold. But they can be given away. Gifts from the toys’ new owners brought in more than $3,000 last year, so gently used toys are gladly accepted.

So gear up for Saturday morning and load the family car or borrow a pickup and clear out those closets and basements: furniture (no mattresses or sleep sofas, please), antiques, clothing for all ages, designer labels for the French Room, household items, décor and holiday pieces, small electrical appliances, tools, sorting goods, exercise equipment, collectibles, gift and boutique items. Maybe even a kitchen sink or two.

Go to www.ladiesboard.org for complete details, or call703-771-2985.

ITEMS THAT CANNOT BE ACCEPTED:

Large appliances (washers, dryers, stoves, freezers, refrigerators, air conditioners, water heaters)

Auto parts, batteries, tires

Car seats

Computers, monitors, keyboards

Copy or fax machines

Curtain roods, Venetian blinds, mini blinds

Metal desks

Encyclopedias, yearbooks, textbooks

Entertainment centers or “pressboard” furniture

Food

Gas grills

Guns, ammunition

Heaters fueled by kerosene or natural gas

Mattresses, sleep sofas

Newspapers, magazines, paper/plastic bags, cardboard

Paints, solvents, oils

Pianos and organs – unless they can be delivered to Morven Park between Oct. 10 – 12.

Gas powered mowers --ditto, delivered to Morven Park Oct. 10 - 12.

 Storm doors and windows

TVs (none! except the occasional brand new, in-the-box flat screen)

Waterbeds