Storehouse overrun with junk

Officials at The Storehouse in Custer are frequently overwhelmed with the generosity of the people of Custer County.
Unfortunately, right now they are also overwhelmed with junk.
The Storehouse has been inundated with donations the past year and Storehouse officials are always happy to get good, used items. More and more frequently, however, that is not the case.
“We are getting somewhat abused,” said Kim Canete, The Storehouse director. “People bring in trash.”
Similar things are happening at other sites around the country. Goodwill recently made national news when it complained about the barrage of trash it receives on a daily basis.
At The Storehouse, 4,100 pounds of donations were recently collected in a three-hour time frame. Then there are the people who just dump stuff off outside. When that happened recently, the donations were rained on overnight, making them worthless.
The Storehouse runs on volunteers and it keeps its hours because that is all the time it can be open with the volunteers it has. The staff has to sort through all the items left inside or outside.
The first priority of the pantry side of The Storehouse is to feed children. The first priority of the Exchange side is to provide for single mothers.
The Storehouse is open to anyone living in Custer County. It receives a stipend from the city and the county.  The rest of the funding comes from donations: private and civic groups or clubs. Also, food drives take place, i.e. Boys Scouts, churches, USPS, etc., and private donations of food are made all year. The Storehouse purchases food from Lynn’s Dakotamart and Feeding South Dakota.
All overhead is covered by donations.  There is not a mortgage on its building. Nobody is paid for the time they work at The Storehouse.
On the other side of the Storehouse is the Exchange, which is where all donations of household goods are received and made available to the county.  Anyone living in Custer County can shop in the Storehouse. There is no charge for any item, big or small. Everything is free.
The list of the feeding programs The Storehouse undertakes is too numerous to name, but it feeds people of all ages through multiple ways—for free—and in March 2020 it began a food pantry for the people of Buffalo Gap.
Canete said people need to make hard decisions before they donate and if they want to get rid of something, look at it—then look at it again—and decide if it should be trashed or if it is in good enough condition to donate.
“If we get a bag of clothes smelling of cigarette smoke, it goes straight into the dumpster. We cannot mix that clothing with the other,”  she said. “Some stuff comes in covered in dirt, mice droppings, broken beyond simple repair, smelling of pets.  It goes on and on.”
In the past year, The Storehouse has had to increase the size of its dumpsters twice due to all the junk left there. Canete suspects the uptick probably has something to do with Sander Sanitation closing its transfer site in Custer, but said The Storehouse should not be the option if people want to throw something away.
Besides the dumpster, Storehouse volunteers take bags of clothing to the missions in Rapid City on their own time. They take floral vases to Jenny’s Floral, eye-glasses and cases to Nathan Weiderholt to take to Lion’s Club and Storehouse volunteers save yarn for the knitters making hats for the annual coat drive.
“Our building is stuffed and our volunteers are getting overwhelmed,” Canete said.
Storehouse volunteers try to keep each other positive and thankful for all that comes in, but The Storehouse is being overrun with things it can’t give away.
“One thing said in the Goodwill article was, ‘If you wouldn’t give it to your judgy mother-in-law, then don't donate it,’” Canete said. “I agree.”