Furniture Sharehouse

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We have two Furniture Drives scheduled for this Spring! 

If your house of worship or other community service-oriented organization is interested in sponsoring a furniture drive, contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 914.834.1294.By bringing your gently-used furniture to us, you help us save on expensive trucking pick-up costs, but before loading up your car, please carefully review our Donation Guidelines and only bring items that we can accept.  We will not be able to accept items that are not in good condition or that we cannot use, and we do not have disposal facilities at the drive sites.

Since opening our doors in April 2007, just in time to help families that lost everything in the devastating floods that spring, Furniture Sharehouse has provided over 19,500 items of free furniture to over 4,200 individuals moving out of homeless shelters, escaping domestic violence, or recovering from difficult personal situations or natural disasters like the spring 2007 floods, and now, Hurricane Irene and its aftermath. You can help by donating your gently-used furniture to us to help these families replace what they lost; by volunteering as a shopping assistant at our warehouse so that we can handle the increased number of referrals, and by donating money to help us pay for the many additional furniture pick-ups we need to do to keep up with the demand.

Westhab Inc. – our very first Member Agency and one of our most supportive –  answered our call for help once again by sending a member of their facilities maintenance crew to do some much-needed renovations at our warehouse.

Space is always tight at our warehouse, so we asked Westhab to help us renovate two former bathrooms into storage rooms by hiding the plumbing fixtures and installing some shelving. Jody Milline spent two days transforming these spaces into real storage solutions for us, and our volunteers are thrilled with the results.  “We used to spend a lot of time searching for matching table legs and leaves in that tiny room,” says Linda Brito, long-time volunteer Shopping Assistant, “but with the new shelving, it’s much more organized.”  Volunteer Sharon Camacho loves the newly-uncovered Bonus Area storage room, because “it will help keep the Bonus Area less cluttered and enable us to feature items better for client shopping.”

Westhab Inc. is the largest nonprofit provider of affordable housing and supportive services in Westchester County, and since 1981, they have helped more than 5,000 homeless families and individuals move into their own apartments, and developed nearly 700 units of quality affordable housing.  Each year, they help thousands of individuals in their youth programs, community centers and employment programs.

Westhab has been a true friend to Furniture Sharehouse since before we were even open, providing pick-up services in the early days, transporting a bi-weekly volunteer warehouse crew from the Vaughn Glanton Employment Residence, and responding graciously and generously to our periodic pleas for construction/renovation assistance.  They are also a member of our Community Advisory Board.

THANK YOU, WESTHAB!

On Saturday, September 9th, six volunteers from Now It's Your Turn Foundation spent two hours working at our warehouse on our FIRST-EVER "Third Saturday of Service". Volunteers helped re-organize the warehouse – reorganizing the jumble of chairs and lamps in the back room, sorting through and matching up dining room tabletops, legs, pedestals and leaves and preparing a storage room for some renovation work – much-needed "tidying up" that we can't get to during the week when we are serving clients.

Furniture Sharehouse's NEW "Third Saturday of Service" has a two-fold purpose. First, it allows us to be open to receive drop-off donations on the THIRD Saturday of every month from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., which we hope will encourage folks to bring their furniture to us and save us on expensive trucking fees. And secondly, it provides volunteer groups like NIYT an opportunity to help us out with a couple of hours of vital warehouse organizing on a monthly basis.

Now It's Your Turn Foundation's mission is to host, support and provide funding to various community organizations with the goal of empowering ordinary people to do extraordinary things. www.nowitsyourturn.org. Their members are young people (mostly twenty-somethings) drawn from the tri-state area, and they organize monthly volunteer opportunities for their members, and periodic multi-project days of service. This was their THIRD time volunteering at the warehouse in the last 18 months – that makes them certified "furniture wranglers" in our book!

So if your community group or house of worship is interested in signing up for a "Third Saturday of Service", please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. – we'd love to have your help! 

On June 2^nd, Furniture Sharehouse received a donation of 106 mattresses from Tempur-Pedic that was made possible by the United Way of Westchester and Putnam’s Gift-in-Kind Program.

Kate Bialo, Executive Director of Furniture Sharehouse, says beds are the biggest need clients have.

“This wonderful donation, made possible by Tempur-Pedic and The United Way of Westchester and Putnam, will make a huge difference in the lives of dozens of families who would otherwise be sleeping on the floor,” Bialo said.

“Every day furniture is thrown away because people don’t know where to donate it. At the same time, we see others who are in such desperate need” said Naomi Adler, Chief Executive Officer of the United Way of Westchester and Putnam.  “Our Gifts-in-Kind program helps put an end to the waste by getting donations to the charities that need them most”.

The Manning family of Yonkers was one of the first families to receive some of the Tempur-Pedic mattresses. Their four young sons, who had been sleeping on broken mattresses,were having a hard time in school because they couldn’t get a good night’s sleep. “They are tired during the day because of the restless sleep and their concentration isn’t where it needs to be” said Cassandra Manning.  “This will be a tremendous help for our family and I am just so very grateful.”

Furniture Sharehouse also thanks John and Connie Levene and CONRI Services of Hawthorne, who donated free storage and transportation for the mattresses so they can be distributed a few dozen at a time.

Pictured: (top) Connie Levene (left) and John Levene (on truck) of CONRI Services, Naomi Adler, CEO of United Way of Westchester Putnam (center) and Kate Bialo, Executive Director of Furniture Sharehouse (right)

Naomi Adler with Deshawn and Cassandra Manning 

On Feb. 17, five volunteers from The Patch spent several hours at the Warehouse, organizing rows of sofas, chairs and bookshelves and removing three truckloads of unusable furniture.

"I was glad that we could donate our time to the Furniture Sharehouse for the latest Give 5,” said Rich Bobé, a Patch advertising manager. “It was very rewarding to know that our work, along with the continual work of Kate Bialo and her regular volunteers, was helping families in need get the furniture throughout Westchester."

The Furniture Sharehouse thanks The Patch for their help.

To read more, see The Patch article.

On Saturday, February 6th, Community Unitarian Church of White Plains (CUC) sponsored a furniture drive at our warehouse.  Nearly two dozen hardy volunteers, most of them congregants from CUC, spent a busy seven hours at our unheated warehouse, helping unload furniture brought by donors, as well as re-organizing the furniture in the warehouse to make room for new donations. Special thanks to Rev. Carol Huston of CUC for her continuing support, to Ann Marie and Scott Damashek, who spearheaded the planning for the drive within CUC; to Danny Klemens, for his publicity and other assistance; to Marie Graham, who applied her special organizational and culinary touches to pull the event together and make sure that everyone knew what to do, how and when to do it, and made sure their tummies were filled with warming beverages, soup and other goodies. And let’s not forget Scott ’s fabulous pulled pork sandwiches! It was our first Furniture Drive/Smorgasbord – from now on, we’ll have to bring a chuckwagon to all our furniture drives!

Thank you to all the Community Unitarian Church congregants – those who braved the cold to work at the drive, those who donated furniture and those who supported us in spirit!  And thanks to the FS regulars who came to help as well -- Doug Graham, Jayne, Deirdre and Morgan -- special mention to Georgia, Morgan's 6-month old labradoodle!

And MARK YOUR CALENDARS -- we have two more furniture drives coming up -- details below:

Saturday, March 20th
9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Sponsored by Mamaroneck High Schol Student Service CLubs
MHS Parking Lot
1000 W. Boston Post Road
Mamaroneck, NY
click here for Flyer

Saturday, April 24
9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Town of North Castle Zero Waste Day
North Castle Town Hall
15 Bedford Road
Armonk, NY

Want to volunteer at these drives, or do you have a group interested in organizing its own furniture drive? 
E-mail us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

• The Patch, March 21, 2011: Furniture Donation Drive at Mamaroneck High School a Success
• Junior League of Westchester on the Sound: 2010 - What a Year for Furniture Sharehouse!
• The Patch, Feb. 25, 2011: Furniture Sharehouse Helps Families in Need
• The Patch, Jan. 21,2011: Martin Luther King, Jr. Award Presented to Community Service Advocate
• The Loop, Jan. 20, 2011: In the Spirit of Dr. King: Making Houses Homes
• The Patch, Dec. 28, 2010: Founder of Furniture Sharehouse to be Honored for Community Service
• Larchmont Gazette, March 12, 2010: Sharehouse & MHS Partner on Furniture Drive: March 20
• LoHud.com, Jan. 10, 2010: Larchmont volunteer furnishes help to families - with furniture
• Home Furnishings Business, Oct. 26, 2009: N.Y. Furniture Bank Holds Fall Drives
• LoHud.com, October 22, 2009: Furniture Bank Plans Donation Drive
• Westchester.com, October 19, 2009: Furniture Sharehouse Fall Furniture Drives
• Westchester.com, September 20, 2009: Furniture Drive to Help Needy Families
• Rye Sound Shore Review, Sept. 24, 2009: Furniture Sharehouse's Fall Furniture Drive
• Larchmont Gazette, April 3, 2009: Furniture Sharehouse County-Wide Drive April 25
• White Plains CitizenNetReporter, August 10, 2008: Furniture Sharehouse Open for Donations
• Westchester Times Tribune, July 24, 2008: Westchester's Furniture Bank Gets a Facelift
• Larchmont Gazette, May 1, 2008: Furniture Sharehouse Launches "Mattresses for Moms" Drive
• Larchmont Gazette, April 24, 2006: New Furniture Sharehouse Restocks Flooded Homes

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