Central Furniture Rescue to host $5 chair sale

Central Furniture Rescue, a Cedar Rapids based nonprofit, will host a $5 chair and bar stool sale in April, called a CHAIR-ity parking lot sale, in an attempt to turn an excess of donated chairs into other needed furniture.

Central Furniture Rescue is a nonprofit that works to provide furniture to people who are transitioning out of homelessness. The organization accepts donated furniture and currently has a large excess of donated chairs, according to Susan Johnston, the founder and executive director of Central Furniture Rescue.

“We have an amazing community, and I keep getting all of these dining room chairs. People will have four chairs, one will break, and they’ll give me the other three. I only give out maybe 25 chairs a week, but I get 30 to 35 in a week,” Johnston said. “I’m never going to get through all these chairs, but I don’t want to throw them away. I thought, ‘What am I going to do with all these chairs?’ and ‘CHAIR’- ity came to mind.”

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Johnston said the nonprofit currently has about 200 chairs in storage, and they’re taking up a lot of space in the nonprofit’s warehouse, space that Johnston would like to use for larger furniture that will be coming in soon through a partnership with a nearby hotel.

“They’re giving me 41 dressers, 41 tables and 82 end tables. I need storage area for all of that, so I have to keep turning things. Those are things that we’re going to use all the time. Those will be gone in two months, but these chairs will be here forever if I don’t find a home for them,” Johnston said.

The event will go from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, April 13, and will be in the parking lot of Central Furniture Rescue, at 2275 16th Ave SW. All the chairs and bar stools available at the event will cost $5 each.

Johnston said she hopes to use the money from the chair sale to purchase other furniture pieces, like dressers and bed frames, that don’t get donated as often because people tend to keep them until they break rather than donating them after a few years.

Central Furniture Rescue spends about $20,000 on bed frames each year, so Johnston is hoping the money raised by selling the extra chairs can help decrease that cost. The money also may be used toward operational expenses, which usually can’t be paid for with grants the way other expenses can.

Johnston said she may add some other things that the nonprofit has in excess to the sale, like pan lids that don’t match any pans and other small items.

“At first, I felt really kind of bad because people give me stuff knowing it’s going directly to someone in need, and now I’m selling stuff,” Johnston said. “How is the community going to respond to this? I don’t want them to think that they’re going to give things to me and I’m going to sell it. But when I have an overage, I can’t give it back into the community because they don’t need it. So, I have to do something with it, and I don’t want it to get to the landfill.”

Central Furniture Rescue has been operating since 2019 and moved into its current warehouse location — a former Chinese buffet — in 2022. In the month of February the nonprofit provided furniture for more than 60 households in the Cedar Rapids area.

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com