A dozen things you may not know about the Forest Grove ReStore

Think you know everything about the Forest Grove ReStore? Here’s a list of a dozen things you may not know about the Forest Grove ReStore and that may surprise you:

1. The ReStore's primary mission is to raise funds for the home building, critical home repair and affordable housing advocacy programs of West Tuality Habitat for Humanity.

2. The ReStore is a social enterprise - it exists to make money to fund a cause, not to provide low-cost items, and as a social enterprise, it also operates with an eye to ethics and social good, like working to reduce our environmental impact and inclusive employee recruitment programs that target those people who often face additional barriers to finding employment and upward mobility.

3. The Forest Grove ReStore first opened in 2008 in donated warehouse space from Henningsen’s Cold Storage. The ReStore moved into its current location on Hwy 8 in October of 2010.

4. The Forest Grove ReStore is housed in a former car dealership.

5. The Forest Grove ReStore has a large outdoor sales space and one of the buildings, which is where we house plumbing supplies, was recycled and rebuilt from where we are currently building houses with partner families.

6. We love featuring photos from customers of things they have bought at the ReStore and up cycled (and if you want to be featured, just send us your story and photo of the item you purchased and re-imagined or restored!)

7. There are online communities devoted to thrift store "finds" or thrift store "hauls", and the Forest Grove ReStore sells a lot of items that could definitely qualify for such.

8. Some of the staff you interact with at the ReStore are volunteers who donate their time to unload donations and to carry purchases to cars, to create displays of items in the ReStore and appropriately price them, and to staff the cashiers desk.

9. Volunteering at the ReStore is a great way to explore different careers and to develop skills for different careers.

10. Not every Habitat for Humanity affiliate has a ReStore, and each ReStore operates independently of each other.

11. ReStores play a significant role in recycling items in their communities, keeping items out of landfills, reducing the need for new items to be shipped from far away, and ensuring certain items are discarded properly, with an eye to their environmental impact.

12. The ReStore is on Facebook and Instagram, and we regularly feature photos of items available in our ReStore.

Did any of the items on this list surprise you? Let us know!