Carleton Lighten Up Garage Sale is Here!

Get ready, Northfield, because it's time for the annual Carleton Lighten Up Garage Sale!

The sale will happen Friday, June 21st, from 8am-5pm, and Saturday, June 22nd, from 8am-12pm, in the Carleton West Gym. The Lighten Up Garage Sale is put on by the Carleton ACT Center with help from Northfield Union of Youth, the Northfield Special Olympics, and Project Friendship. All proceeds benefit these three organizations. In 2012, ACT’s community garage sale raised over $22,000 for these local non-profits.

If you've never been to Lighten Up before, I suspect you will be quite surprised by both the size of the sale and the quality of the sale items. The majority of the items are donated by Carleton students when they move off campus at the end of the year. Additional items are also accepted from community numbers.  

Items you can expect to find at the sale are:

• Clothes: Most of them are men's and women's clothing, with a small section of children's clothing. Coats, jackets, vests, skirts, dresses, pants, jeans, shirts, blouses, sweaters, swimsuits, underwear, and socks...you name it, we got it.

• Sporting/recreation equipment: everything from frisbees, soccer balls, ice skates, and hockey sticks to hand ball gloves, helmets, cleats, and tap shoes.

• Lamps: both desk lamps and floor lamps

• Bedding/Pillows/Sleeping Bags

• Suitcases/Backpacks/Purses

• Shoes: boots, slippers, heels, sneakers

• Hats, mittens, gloves, and scarves

• Small Furniture: end tables, shelves, small storage units, chairs

• Mini fridges

• Electronics

• Books

• Dishes

• Picture frames

• Household items

• Carleton merchandise

• Office supplies

• Holiday items

There are especially a lot of very nice winter items, probably due to the fact that many Carleton students are from out of state and figure they will never need that Northface jacket or those figure skates again. Additionally, much of the clothing is name-brand: Gap, Banana Republic, J. Crew, REI, etc. These students have some good style and expensive tastes! The items are also very well organized, sorted, and labeled for your shopping ease. The volunteers who help setup have the process down to a science.

We hope to see you all there! Remember, there are three very good reasons to support this event:

One—We save items that would otherwise very likely have been thrown away. 

Two—You make off with quality items for extremely low prices. 

Three—All the money you spend is split equally between three very important Northfield nonprofits.