La Providencia Guild members, their husbands and friends worked like little elves over the holidays to clean and reorganize the thrift shop at 3301 W. Burbank Blvd. All proceeds go to Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
Thrift shop chairwoman Deborah Spang and husband, Ron, spent hours planning the project. Their objective was to make the shopping experience easier for customers.
Each year at holiday time, the guild has the floors stripped and repolished. This year, everything was placed into storage and, after the floors were done, shelves were cleaned, new racks were installed and signs were added to tell customers where to find items — and all in only eight days.
Deborah Spang wanted a more open look to the store so she replaced the cubicles and round racks with straight racks and opened up the shelves to hang more merchandise such as linens, she said.
She created a library at the rear of the store and has shelved the books on three walls along with family items such as games and DVDs. She added a chair to make browsing more comfortable. This helped the store's flow as the books had been on the wall midway back and people would crowd the aisle, making it hard to pass, she said.
