A Furniture Makeover
October 2023
There’s an endless list of impactful activities that Girl Scouts carry out within their troops: community service, trainings, cleanups, field trips, cooking, educational workshops—but one you may not have heard of, is refinishing furniture.
Troop 1885 changed up their usual meeting activity to embrace a new creative outlook, DIYing a dresser they found on a community page.
“Our troop decided this year to move away from badge work and focus more on having meetings outdoors and working with our hands,” says Troop 1885 Leader Lucinda Pype.
The troop found the dresser on “Buy Nothing,” a series of community-based Facebook pages where members can post objects such as furniture, clothing, supplies, etc. that they no longer need and wish to get rid of for free. Beginning the project in mid-October, six Girl Scouts from Troop 1885 began working on refreshing the dresser.
“We went through the process of determining supplies needed and picking out paint colors and new drawer pulls,” says Lucinda.
After a few meetings where the troop sanded and painted the piece of furniture (naturally in a beautiful array of pastel rainbow shades), the troop had successfully turned something that normally would have been disposed of, into something special with a second life.
“My biggest takeaway was that the troop got to see how older items can be made beautiful again with a little elbow grease. Troop meetings don’t always have to be badge work, there are many ways to connect as a troop and give back,” says Lucinda.
Lucinda says her Girl Scouts are determining where the dresser should go from here as they are considering passing along their efforts and donating it to someone in need.
