|Photo by Emma Delk| Trina Schneider, a clerk at the Salvation Army’s Wheeling Thrift Store (left), bags items while manager Jacqueline Nice (right) serves customers on National Thrift Store Day.

WHEELING – Customers lined up outside the Salvation Army’s Wheeling Thrift Store before opening Friday to score the best bargains during the store’s quarterly National Thrift Day sale.

During the sale, almost all items in the store were priced at $0.25 to commemorate the holiday that honors thrift stores across the country.

Just two hours after Friday’s sale began, Lt. John Lawrence of the Salvation Army in Wheeling said 60 customers had purchased “over 1,219 items.” With much of the inventory leaving the store, Lawrence noted that the sale provides an opportunity to “sell off all of the summer items.”

“On Monday we will have all the new items in the store and get ready for fall,” Lawrence said.

In addition to clearing shelves to make room for fall and winter clothing, the sales also fund other Salvation Army programs in Wheeling, Lawrence said.

Proceeds from the thrift store help fund the Salvation Army’s Wheeling Shelter and cover the utilities, food and rent the organization provides to residents.

“When you shop at one of our thrift stores, you’re not only getting a good deal, you’re also helping your community,” Lawrence said. “Purchases at the thrift store go toward everything else we offer.”

Since some items at the thrift store cost as much as $15 on a normal day, Lawrence said the price reduction on some items would be “great.”

“Even some of our furniture is quarter-off,” Lawrence noted. “We try to price it lower than most other thrift stores in the area to be competitive. We want to give our customers and the public the opportunity to come in and get the stuff at a relatively good price.”

Lawrence added that not only would the thrift store’s regular customers be on the hunt for good deals on Friday, but that the “general population” would also have an “additional incentive” to stop by.

“The kids are just going back to school, so this is an opportunity for people to come in and buy clothes for their kids,” Lawrence said. “There are also people on fixed incomes who live paycheck to paycheck, so this is a good opportunity for them to get some of the items in the store at a very reasonable price.”

Lawrence added that during the sale, employees will be “all hands on deck” as the discounts attract so many customers that the line at the checkout stretches “from the register to the back of the building.”

“Before we opened this morning, there was a line of people outside the building waiting all the way to our parking lot,” Lawrence said. “People were also sitting in their cars waiting for the doors to open. The staff did a great job today keeping people moving.”