40. redded and threaded.

At some point during Saturday’s Redd Up Thread Up clothing exchange, someone said this: “It’s like running a thrift store with your friends.”

And yeah, that’s what Saturday felt like.

Lemme back up for a second. Our friend Jennie came up with an idea for an easy, one-day clothing exchange — collect donations, and then give out bags to fill — free to those who donated, $5 for those who just showed up at the event. The money she raised would go to the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh.

So Jennie found a place that would host the afternoon-long event — the nice people at WYEP on the South Side — and with the help of a bunch of volunteers, spent a week collecting and organizing the clothes. Mrs. Crappy and I helped with the actual event, sorting clothes that came in during the day, getting people pointed in the right direction when they had questions and helping too clean up at the end.

And then we went to Fat Head’s for beer and dinner (holy crap, the South Side Slopes headwich is fabulous. And Mrs. Crappy says I’m allowed to have it just once a year.).

We were blown away by the number of people who brought clothes along when they showed up on Saturday; when Jennie sent us a link to the video, a really cool time-lapse thing shot by Rob, she pointed out that although a ton of clothes walked out the door, the piles of clothing never seem to dwindle. And yeah, we had extras — those will be going to other thrift stores later this week. It went well enough that Jennie not only pledged to do it again, but she said it’ll be a two-day event next time.

The point? Mrs. Crappy and I had a blast. We got to help out a friend while spending the day with old friends and new. We got to help out some people who need it. And there were gigantic, tasty sammiches at the end.

Is there a better day than that?