Thrifting with Tyler

If you weren’t one of the lucky 50 people on the Thrift with Tyler tour bus on May 2nd, then, dude, you missed out. This was the second year of the thrifty tour and after missing it the first year, I was NOT going to miss it again. 

 The Thrift with Tyler Tour Bus benefits Dwell with Dignity and if you haven’t heard of DwD, let me break it down for ya. It’s an amazing Dallas based charity that has recently started a provisional chapter in Atlanta that I am so proud to be a part of.  Dwell with Dignity is a “nonprofit group of interior designers and volunteers dedicated to creating soothing, inspiring homes for families struggling with homelessness and poverty. We provide and install home interiors for families including items such as furnishings and art, bedding and kitchen supplies, and food in the pantry.” If you’re thinking it’s just a group of designers grabbing a homeless person off the street and giving them a fully furnished apartment full of fabulous goods and letting them go, you’ve got it all wrong. DwD works with agencies that have accountability based programs in place to help those coming out of homelessness or poverty to become self sufficient. Most of the families we work with are single mothers with little ones and the impact that DwD has on these families is just incredible. The goal here is to break the cycle of poverty and improve their outlook on life. Most of these families have traveled a long, hard road and Dwell with Dignity strives to give them a place where they can relax; a place they can call home. Imagine bustin’ your hump at work all day, you go pick up your kids and head home. All you want to do is chill out from a stressful day and relax with your littles. Then imagine that this is what you come home to:

Not a very relaxing space and certainly not a place to refuel, recharge and feel empowered to take on the world…. And then think of your kids; birthdays, holidays, play dates… many of these children have never had a play date at their home or a birthday party with their friends over. Imagine being able to change that.

Dwell with Dignity comes in and provides literally everything a family needs to start fresh; from two sets of sheets for each bed to two sets of towels for each person, toothbrushes, mops, brooms, heck, even shelf liner. We stock the pantry, pack the fridge and make them dinner for their first night in their new home. When DwD is done, all the family needs is their clothes and a key. It’s lots of hard work, but man, it’s so rewarding. I mean, look at this joy!

After living in Dallas my whole life and not hearing about DwD until they came to Atlanta last year, I’m pretty convinced that this is the reason I’m in the A. I mean, we can never know God’s plan, but He pretty blatantly plucked us up from Dallas and put us here.

Okay, I could go on forever about DwD, but I hear you, who the heck is Tyler?! Only one of the most adorable people I’ve met in Atl so far. He’s been thrifting his entire life, has a booth space at Queen of Hearts in Marietta, works for Codarus and can rock a bow tie in dang near any circumstance.

A photo posted by Dena (Holley) Stormer (@heartsandsharts) on May 5, 2015 at 6:56am PDT

And I might have kissed his sweaty face after winning tickets to the Atlanta Zoo.

All ticket sales for the Thrifting with Tyler Tour Bus benefit DwD. They also do an insane raffle and all proceeds of those ticket sales go to Dwell with Dignity as well. Basically, we all hop on a bus, hit Tyler’s favorite thrifting spots, drink prosecco and do some wheelin’ an’ dealin’. I took zero pictures on this adventure but here’s a video by a fellow thrifter of some of the shenanigans. Things got a little cray towards the end so thank goodness that’s not included. Wink.

Atlanta Magazine even did a story on it and called it the “hottest ticket in town”. We started off at  Steve McKenzie’s, then hopped on the bus and headed west. Codarus generously provided lunch for us which was totally delicious. It had pimiento cheese AND swiss cheese. That’s the kind of sammich a fat girl can get behind. We ended the day with some prosecco provided by ADAC and then we headed back to Steve McKenzie’s.

I started this post with the intention of sharing the goods I picked up but this has gotten way too long and I’m a little lazy. So, I’ll leave you with this: There’s talk of a FALL THRIFTING TOUR that will be heading north!

So if you missed the bus on May 2nd, don’t fret, there may still be another chance to feed your thrifting addiction. Sidenote: North Georgia in the fall? GORGEOUS.

If you’re Insta-obsessed like I am, you can follow @thriftwithtyler to check out his latest finds and @dwellwithdignity to keep up events they are having in Dallas as well as Atl. You can also follow me on social media as I will be posting ticket/bus/DwD info as it comes available.

If you wanna take a peep at some other DwD related posts and projects, here ya go!