For a good cause: Yard sale to benefit suicide prevention group for youth

Photo by Bill Green

Samantha Hartman will hold a yard sale today and Sunday at the Feagaville residence of her parents, off U.S. 340. The proceeds from the sale will be given to The Trevor Project, a national organization that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ youth. She is shown with some of the items for sale.

Boxes brimming with clothing, dishes, books and kitchenware were piled wall to wall. Televisions, furniture -- even Christmas decorations -- filled in the gaps.

Another basement and an outdoor storage unit are also filled with items collected by Hartman, her four siblings and their relatives.

All of it is going into a yard sale today and Sunday at the Feagaville residence of Hartman's parents, off U.S. 340, she said.

The proceeds from the sale will be given to The Trevor Project, a national organization that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth.

The yard sale has a Facebook events page with hundreds of followers jostling for items that have caught their eye, Hartman said. She expects about 700 people to show up over the weekend and hopes to raise $1,000 for the organization.

The whole thing started out simply enough, said Hartman, a secondary education major at Towson University. Her parents were remodeling their kitchen, other relatives were moving, and they all wanted to shed years' worth of accumulated stuff.

It would have been difficult to persuade her mother to hold a simple yard sale, she said, but holding one to benefit a good cause was all the impetus needed to come to an agreement.

Hartman created the Facebook page so family members could communicate and organize their efforts, she said. A couple people picked up the page on their news feeds and said they'd like to take part.

Read more:
For a good cause: Yard sale to benefit suicide prevention group for youth