The Everyone’s Resource Depot, where everything gets a splendid second life, turns 40 this month.
Words and photos by Marc Glass / December 2019
In 1979, long before “makerspace” entered our vocabulary, the Everyone’s Resource Depot set up shop in the basement of UMF’s Franklin Hall to the delight of the region’s thrifty crafters — children and educators alike.
For most of its existence, Mary Ryan has served as the nonprofit’s coordinator, helping patrons find inspiration and materials for objets d’art among myriad things and stuff that are ready and waiting (and incredibly inexpensive!) for creative reuse.
Mary Ryan, coordinator of the Everyone’s Resource Depot for nearly all of the nonprofit’s 40-year history on the UMF campus.
This month, as the ERD turns 40, seems like a good time to celebrate this distinctive community resource — and the Depot’s doyenne of upcycling — in photos. And if the images move you to revisit after a decade or more, the Depot is now located in the lower level of the Theodora J. Kalikow Education Center, across the hall from the University’s Office of Graduate and Continuing Education. (That’s how we roll at UMF — providing educational programming that spans the ages.)
As ever, the Everyone’s Resource Depot remains the perfect place to take a child, or your inner child, “on a rainy day, a snowy day, or a really hot and sunny day,” says Depot Trustee and former student intern Carly Georgen ’17. “Every day is a great day to visit the Everyone’s Resource Depot.”
Where can a plastic bottle become a happy Holstein cow or an egg carton transform into a toothy and colorful critter …
or blocks of wood and buttons become robots? In western Maine, the Everyone’s Resource Depot.
Ryan says the myriad material resources available for creative reuse come to the Depot as contributions. Some are dropped off by donors, and some are sourced within the community and its businesses by Ryan herself.
Procuring materials for the Depot within the community, “keeps me in touch with people and businesses,” says Ryan. “Sometimes if we have a lot of something here in our area, like scrap wood, I can swap that for something that we need more of, like felt scraps, from the Share Center in Lewiston.”
The ever-changing honor roll of donors acknowledges the individuals, businesses, and organizations that provide the Depot with its inventory.
“It’s like an arts and crafts store that’s filled with reusable materials,” says Georgen, who worked at the Depot while she pursued a degree in early childhood special education at UMF. “All you need is a dollar to find everything you need. If you can’t find it, Mary will help you find it. She can help turn something that was discarded into something that you need.”
Orderly arranged, clearly labeled, and priced for little pockets, the donated thingamajigs and doohickies await creative reuse.
Paper, a staple at the Everyone’s Resource Depot, comes in small rolls …
big rolls …
stacks of pads …
and in all the colors of the rainbow. Twenty-five cents will get you half a pound.
And if you need gently used Crayons to bring your masterpiece to life, Ryan and the ERD have those, too — also for 25 cents.
Ryan says the materials available at the Depot over the years have reflected prevailing technology, product packaging, and local industries. With the advent of digital photography, once-ubiquitous 35mm film canisters are now scarcer than hens’ teeth. Scrap leather, abundant when shoes were made in Farmington and Wilton, is now less readily available. But scrap wood is still plentiful. (What once came from Forster Manufacturing in Strong and Wilton now comes courtesy of W.A. Mitchell Fine Furniture of Farmington and Hammond Lumber Co.)
With a bit of creative vision, these dowels could become stakes for seedlings, axles for a toy car, or the walls of a miniature log cabin.
For some patrons, says Ryan, part of the Depot’s appeal is the extra measure of creativity its products require to take their second-life form.
The mindset of many regulars is “I’m not going to buy materials at the store. I’m going to work with found materials,” she says. “The Depot helps feed the belief that we can do better with our resources than we have in the past.”
Even the cost of goods at the Depot, cheap at twice the price, is intended to encourage thoughtful consumption.
“When people have to pay even a little, it makes them stop and consider purchasing only what they need,” says Ryan. “It’s part of a strategy to encourage conservation thinking.”
In addition to all the ingredients for creative projects, Ryan and her staff of student interns also conduct an array of hands-on workshops to show patrons how to make Halloween masks, holiday ornaments, Easter baskets, picture frames, and in the run-up to Chester Greenwood Day, earmuffs, just to name a few.
For Ryan, who early on taught high school biology for 15 years in Boston-area schools, playing the role of lead educator at the Depot comes naturally.
“I always make an effort to get to know people and find out how to meet their needs,” she says. “Even after all these years, I still feel like a teacher every day.”
If you cannot make it to one of the ERD’s hands-on workshops, Ryan and her staff of interns have created project kits to go, containing everything needed to make, for instance, a pirate hat, spyglass, and treasure chest.
Making seasonally themed projects has long been a hallmark of the Depot’s programming. Thirty-nine years ago, as its first anniversary drew nigh, early board member Connie Fearon sent the invitation below to area residents, encouraging them to make holiday ornaments and celebrate over slices of birthday cake decorated by the late Patty Jacobs ’87. As evinced by the composition of the circa-1979 board, several UMF alumni were in on the ground floor of the Depot, including Mark Adelson ’76, the late Bun Crosby ’23, Jeanne ’77 and Tom ’79 Cyrus, the late Vi Millette ’30, and Trudi Schneider ’75.
Given the number of students majoring in some form of education at UMF and their love of developing compelling learning activities, it should come as no surprise that UMF students are among the Depot’s most loyal customers.
Bottle caps became tentacle suckers on this squid created by a student in ECH 384, Science Education for Young Children.
As a student teacher working with children with special needs, Georgen says she developed a set of learning activities involving designing and engineering model cars with recycled materials purchased at the Depot. “We made wheel axels out of straws and dowels and wheels out of ribbon spools,” she explains. “We then measured the roll potential of different constructions and materials and eventually raced our designs. It was a highly engaging way for students to express creativity and hone math skills through constructing the cars and measuring their performance.”
Now a third-year resource-room teacher at W.G. Mallett School in Farmington, Georgen says she still shops at the Depot — for work and pleasure.
“I’ve always been a crafty person,” she says. “The first time I walked into the Everyone’s Resource Depot when I was a student, I thought to myself, this is my place.”
Resource Room Teacher and Everyone’s Resource Depot Board Member Carly Georgen ’17, photographed in her W.G. Mallett School classroom.
At the Depot, and in Ryan’s company, Georgen says that she found a resource for more than project supplies when she was a student at UMF.
“Because I was so far from home, Mary always felt like a grandma to me,” says Georgen who came to UMF from Connecticut. “She helped me get through a tough time when I was ill, and she’s always been a good friend. I see myself being her one day, working at the Depot. I look forward to bringing my own children there. That’s how much I love it.”