Midwestern Reuse Stores Inspire Creativity and Sustainability 

This isn’t a story about your typical Savers, Goodwill, JOANN (rest in peace), or Michaels. 

This is about creative reuse centers—about scrappiness, affordable art, and putting the word “trash” to bed. 

With over 100 “art thrift stores” across the U.S., the Midwest is home to nearly a quarter of them. 

One of these locales has been around for three decades in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Anne Sawyer, ArtStart

Inside ArtScraps ReUse Center are bins—on bins on bins (did we mention bins?)—of yarn, paint, and toilet paper tubes. We’re talking brushes, beads, and bottle caps. The holy grail: 

“Getting people to think outside the box when they think of art making,” says director Anne Sawyer. “And you’re also getting people to think a little bit more about where the things that they’re buying come from.” 

These donation-based stores typically take gently used art supplies, whether traditional or unorthodox, and resell them as-is or rework them into sellable kits. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Anne Sawyer, ArtStart

Then, let the creativity begin.

“You can walk in there and even if you’re not a trained artist, I think you can get inspired … And that’s what it’s all about. We want everybody to make art and have fun doing it and do it in an environmentally friendly way, if possible,” Sawyer says.

This earth consciousness is major for the Idea Store in Urbana, Illinois. It accepts items most would toss out—bread ties, those mesh bags that hold oranges, or postage stamps.

Collectively, the Idea Store diverted 1,500 pounds of trash—no, treasure!—in just four days. Last year, it took in 64,000 pounds of materials that could have ended up at the dump.

“The more we can help people to see ways of reusing and reducing consumption, the better,” says store president Annie McManus. “I think this is sort of coming back to that time where people utilized all the aspects of something in as many ways possible, in a way of both frugality … as well as the environment.” 

We’ve got inspiration; we’ve got sustainability.  

For Kim Geiser, her reuse store is about those, yes—but it’s also majorly about fun. 

After all, she’s the founder and director of the joyfully named Hello Happiness in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Geiser wants the third space to feel like Walt Disney World—magical and immersive—without that price tag (most things in the store are under a dollar.) 

“It’s more than a thrift store,” she says. “I really wanted to create a space where people could be creative … fully themselves without the cost restrictions … and embrace what makes them a little weirder than the rest of us.” 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Anne Sawyer, ArtStart

Shopkeeper Tips for Opening a Creative Reuse Store