Red Cedar Neighborhood Yard Sale This Weekend

Residents of the Red Cedar Neighborhood in East Lansing are collaborating with neighborhood houses of worship to host a yard sale this weekend.

Running Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., the sale will feature everything from toys and games to kitchenware and furniture.

Amie Kovitvongsa, one of the neighborhood planners, said the Islamic Center will act as the entry point for the yard sale. The center’s Women’s Committee will make Middle Eastern food and baked goods and host a water station for attendees.

University Lutheran Church is working with Lansing’s Kehillat Israel Synagogue to host a free-cycle event where individuals can donate and take items for free.

“We’re encouraging students and other community members to come and just take what they need and donate those things they’d like to give away,” Kovitvongsa said.

University United Methodist Church is providing refreshments, including Dairy Queen blizzards, from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday.

Kovitvongsa has lived in the neighborhood for more than 40 years and told East Lansing Info that these types of events were regular occurrences in past decades.

“It was just a fun, casual, relaxed weekend where you could visit with neighbors and exchange things, maybe sell a few things,” she said, “but it’s kind of gone by the wayside. Those residents have all aged and their kids have moved away and we have new families.”

A subcommittee of the Red Cedar Neighborhood Association decided to resurrect the tradition because, Kovitvongsa said, many residents are at an age when they’re trying to divest themselves of some of their belongings, while students from Michigan State University are moving into the neighborhood and looking for furnishings for their apartments and houses.

Fatima Ashraf joined the Islamic Center just eight months ago but is a co-planner of the yard sale event. She said the weekend will be a success only if it helps bring people together.

“Doesn’t matter if they’re taking anything from us, getting anything, that’s not the whole purpose,” she told ELi. “The whole purpose is to bring all these communities together, and if they show up and support one another, that will be a success. We’re not representing three different backgrounds, but one community. We are all in this together.”