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The garage sale is over. The money has been counted. But that old recliner is still sitting in the front yard, along with half the bric-a-brac you had hoped nobody could live without.

Usually that situation calls for a trip to the Salvation Army or Goodwill to donate what could not be sold.

Recent community garage sales have brought an influx of donations to both the local Goodwill and the Salvation Army drop-off points causing a bit of a mess at both locations.

While the Salvation Army has continued to accept donations all along, the Goodwill has turned some away on days where the store room was full and no pick up was scheduled for that day.

According to Tanya Geer, assistant manager at the Warren Goodwill, if the store room is full, they do ask individuals to come back when they can accommodate the donation.

"It isn't a problem. It is more of an inconvenience to the people who want to drop things off. We usually just ask them to bring their donation back another day," Geer said.

Major Ron Starnes of the Salvation Army stated that donations have been accepted all along, but strongly recommends that donors not leave their unwanted goods outside the drop-off box.

"If it gets rained on we can't use it. But I think our biggest problem here in town is that people begin to pile it up outside the box and then other people think it's just an area where they can come and just take whatever they want because it's outside the box," he added

Starnes advised that if the box is full or the item is too large to fit inside the box, donors should bring the items back another day when the box isn't full, or bring it inside the Salvation Army during regular business hours. For very large items such as furniture, it is a good idea to call the Salvation Army to make arrangements for specific items.

What happens after the unwanted goods are dropped off at these locations?

"If you bring clothes or furniture or anything like that inside the Salvation Army, we try to the best of our ability to give them away. There are people inside our community who are needful also. We will try to give things out to the people of our community," Starnes said.

Aside from the Salvation Army's effort to provide the goods to individuals in our community, both the Salvation Army and the Goodwill also have processing centers to help get the goods re-circulated.

"We send our donations to another store in Falls Creek. It is a processing center and they go through and price the stuff then it is sent out to different stores," Geer explained.

From there, the goods are sold to consumers at Goodwill stores like the one located in the Warren Mall. According to www.goodwill.org, more than 84 percent of Goodwill's total revenues are used to fund education and career services and other critical community programs to prepare people with disadvantages for job success. The site states that over one and a half million disadvantaged individuals received employment and training services in 2008 as a result of the store's revenues.

The Salvation Army sends their goods to an Adult Rehabilitation Center where it is processed then sold in Salvation Army Family Stores. The Adult Rehabilitation Centers Referred to as ARC, are voluntary 90-day in-residence rehabilitation programs for drug and alcohol addiction. Individuals within the centers help process the donated goods and may also work in the stores. The center is 100 percent self-staining through the proceeds of the Family Stores. The unwanted goods from Warren travel to the Erie regional ARC.

Both locations encourage donors to continue to bring unwanted goods to the drop off points but ask that goods be dropped off with the understanding that they may need to bring items back if a truck isn't scheduled that day. Goods are picked up from the Goodwill location on Monday and Thursday unless it is a holiday and from Salvation Army on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.