In the year and a half the Shepherd’s House has been holding its bag sale, more than 2,000 bags of clothes have been sold. Now the warehouse on Market street has more clothes than ever and the doors will open next Saturday at 7 a.m. for those in search of a deal.

John Canosa, who is on the Shepherd’s House board of directors, said $1 per bag is really a gimmick. He said the local charity actually loses money on the sale. Although the organization is not paying any rent at a building that local businessman Gene Rees is loaning them, they still have to pay for utilities.

The group gives what it can to the residents at the local homeless shelter, but more donations come in than they can use, so the bag sale gives them a way to help the community.

Soon the group will have to find a new place to keep the clothes that are donated to the Shepherd’s House. Officials there will have to move out of the space they occupy now and hopefully find another free location to warehouse the clothes and other donated items to the Shepherd’s House. Among the items the House has to store are toys and furniture that residents will need when they find a permanent place to live.

Canosa said he hopes that someone from the community will come forward to offer up just such a space in the next 90 days. In the meantime, the upcoming bag sale will help reduce the number of items they are storing in the warehouse.

He said the sale has been popular in the past, with crowds lining up before 6:30 a.m.

The day of the sale, customers buy the number of bags they think they can fill. When they leave, money for the bags that are not used is refunded.

In past sales, the clothes have been laying on tables, but now, because of a donation by JCPenny, most of the clothes are hanging on racks. They are not sorted by size, but are sorted into categories.

Canosa said additional donations to the Shepherd’s House are appreciated.

He said the going record for the sale was the woman who was able to carefully roll up and place 23 items into one bag.

The Shepherd’s House opened on April 13, 2003, and has served 950 men, women and children. The sister house, which is a battered women’s shelter, Mary Sue’s Safe Haven, has been open just less than a year and has served 125 residents.

Leslie Moore, who is the night manager at the Shepherd’s House, has been in charge of sorting out and hanging all of the clothes for the sale. Canosa said her work has been “extraordinary.”

Contact Mondee Tilley at mtilley@mtairynews.com or at 719-1930.