On the second floor of Parkes Hall, a pile of donated t-shirts sits on a table. It’s not uncommon to see members of NU Thrift Store listening to music while cutting up these donated t-shirts, creating unique designs out of the scraps and pasting them onto cardboard squares to make fabric murals.
“We always try to give (the clothes) a second life, but if not, we always make sure to use them in these crafting events or other things,” said McCormick junior Lubabah Ali, the club’s co-public relations director.
One of the main goals of the organization is to extend the lifetimes of clothing by reselling old items and showing members how they can recycle clothing themselves, according to Communication senior Alexandra Bomhorski, who was a co-president of NU Thrift Store for the past two years.
The organization puts on events like quarterly pop-up thrift stores in the basement of Parkes, where they get clothes from collection bins placed across three spots on campus.
Bomhorski said another one of the organization’s goals is to support the First Generation Low Income community on campus.
Every pop-up thrift store has a “FGLI hour,” meaning that the first hour of every pop-up is only open to FGLI students, so they have the first pick of all the clothes. After the first hour, the thrift store opens up to the general NU community, and every item is three dollars.
NU Thrift Club has also held crafting events and workshops to teach members skills to reinvent their clothing, such as embroidery and other upcycling.
“For these events where we’re teaching a skill, it’s teaching people how better to use their clothes to divert them from (waste) streams,” said Weinberg senior and co-program coordinator Audrey Clarendon. “For our pop up ones, it’s putting that into action. I think above all, it’s (giving members) knowledge.”
NU Thrift Store also works with other on campus organizations, such as For Members Only, Mayfest Productions and Students Organizing for Labor Rights to put on collaborative pop-up thrift stores for certain events or to donate extra clothing.
In addition to on-campus organizations, NU Thrift Store also donates the proceeds they get from their pop-up thrift store sales to both local nonprofits and nonprofit organizations on global issues, including Climate Action Evanston and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
“When we donate to clubs and organizations off campus, it isn’t always (related to) sustainability, it’s also current event related,” Bomhorski said. “We are helping sustainability, but we also want to make sure that people who need help in the moment are getting that. That’s why we did PCRF during the war in Gaza.”
Bomhorski said they think that with thrifting becoming more of a trend and a “hot topic,” every year the organization gets an influx of new people who are interested in thrifting. However, Clarendon said what originally drew her to the club is that the organization places a focus on the sustainable and socially conscious aspect of thrifting.
“It’s a group of five, six, seven people that put in a lot of effort,” Clarendon said. “Behind every event is (Bomhorski) lugging pounds and pounds of stuff across campus, driving to go get clothes from Junior League of Evanston Thrift House or local thrift stores, (while) figuring out what we’re going to do for some event. It’s just a lot of effort that we put in because we really love this club.”
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