It’s hard to believe that Renton schools are already back in session. I was one of those very weird kids who liked going back to school. It was something about the promise of a new school year, and all of the new things that you would be learning. Before each school year, my mom would take me shopping for a couple of new outfits and usually a new winter coat because I grew up in Michigan, where the weather was very cold. We weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, so my mom scrimped to make sure I had new clothes to start the year.

Unfortunately, many children are not so fortunate.

The start of school year can be an embarrassing time for children who only have hand-me-downs, ill-fitting and out-of-style shoes and even worse, tattered and torn underwear. They don’t have to start school that way. There is a place in Renton that gives away free gently used clothing to families in need. It is called the Renton Clothes Bank. (Full disclosure here: I have served on the board for the clothes bank for the past three years.) One item the clothes bank is in constant need of keeping in stock, believe it or not, is blue jeans. Other sorely needed items are new underwear, socks and shoes. Last year, the clothes bank served 500 to 650 families each month. It is an incredible number and those numbers, sadly, are growing, including many first-time families visiting the clothes bank. Families are referred by many of our non-profit agencies, churches and family liaisons with the school district.

I write this column with the hope that I get you thinking about all of those clothes sitting in your closet that haven’t been worn recently. That you might donate those jeans that no longer fit (and you know they don’t, so just own up to it now!) that someone else could use. We have a rule in our household that I try my hardest to “enforce” – one item in, two items out. And, if it hasn’t been worn in a year – out the door it goes. My good friend, Pat Auten, a fellow clothes bank board member, has a story about the power of the clothes bank. One little fellow in elementary school was called “Stinky” because he was wearing an old pair of sneakers that were duct-taped together and the kids said his feet were smelly.  The shoes were wet most of the time because of the rainy weather and his sweaty feet. To compound the problem, he didn’t have any socks to wear with the sneakers.  When the nurse and family liaison finally got the boy to take his shoes off so they could measure his feet for new ones, they discovered that he had a number of sores on his feet from being wet all the time and the shoes were two sizes too small.  It was amazing what a pair of sneakers that fit, clean socks, and a bar of soap did to raise his self-esteem and help him fit in with his peers once again.

Donate your clothes, refer someone in need, have a clothes drive. Families in Renton need your help.

For more information about the Clothes Bank, see rentonclothesbank.org. It is located directly next to RAYS and across from the Renton History Museum.

Susan Bressler is an active member of a number of Renton organizations, including the Renton Chamber of Commerce. E-mail her at scbressler@comcast.net.

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