It’s with a heavy heart and a lot of anxiety that we make the following announcement. Toni’s Ponies Thrift will be closing in a few weeks. We are no longer able to accept donations at this time. We were given an amazing opportunity to open a small thrift shop in the heart of Kingston. We went in knowing that it might be a temporary location but had no idea it would be this short lived. Many many hours have been dedicated to gathering donations, sorting, cleaning, and putting together a very homey environment that is welcoming to all. We have had so much community support and it is heartbreaking to start thinking about closing up shop and packing it all away. This shop has been a long-time dream, and while it has been successful, we no longer have access to our retail space. While here, we have met so many amazing people and feel so blessed to be able to serve our community.
For those of you who don’t know about the thrift shop, I would like to tell you a little bit about it. Each year we have our annual fundraising yard sale. This is where we collect starting in January and put together a HUGE sale in June or July where everything is sold by donations. We don’t price anything. With this money, our goal is to be able to put hay in our barn for the year. We have been doing it for the past five years and it has become our biggest fundraiser to date. This year we were privileged enough to use the Mercantile building in downtown Kingston across from Henry Hardware. It was then graciously offered to us to have a pop up thrift shop to continue raising funds to support the care of the horses at our rescue. Just like the yard sale, we only ask for donations. We don’t price all of our inventory. This synergetic approach to fundraising had us so excited. The shop was a place that people could thrift for great treasures and give what they could and folks could donate locally to help build a shop in their community, all the while raising money for Toni’s Ponies horse rescue. We’ve been blown away by the interactions and relationships we’ve made in just a short time. We’ve also been humbled by the generosity we’ve seen. This thrift shop is needed here in Kingston. We have home goods, artwork, records, furniture, and amazing children’s section, kitchen ware – you name it we’ve got it. If you haven’t popped in yet, you might want to do so soon. As of now we have to find a new space by the middle of September.
We are on the lookout for any available retail space in Kingston that we can afford. If you have any contacts at all or any ideas of where we can set up shop more permanently please contact Toni. Please spread the word and as always, thank you for your support.