A lot of the news in a green blog can be negative – bad air, too much trash, animal abuse, and unfair trade. But, today, I am going to write about a positive trend happening this holiday season.
With the current dire financial straits, many have been struggling to give presents to their family for the holidays. In fact, something has come back that I thought was gone forever – layaway.
As a kid growing up in the ‘70s, all the moms I knew used layaway. That was the system where Kmart (we didn’t have access to a Wal-Mart at the time) would take a small deposit, and put your clothes, bikes, whatever away in a box in the back. Every week or two, you paid a little bit more on it until it was paid off. This, of course, was a time before credit cards were rampant.
Today, it seems like a lot of people who don’t have credit cards (or don’t want to run the ones they have up even further) are using layaway. But, you still have to pay on it or it returns to the shelves.
Lately, a great phenomenon has been occurring all over the country – people paying on stranger’s layaway accounts. A little boy walked into a Kmart in San Mateo, California and put $20 on the counter. He asked the layaway worked to find an account that had toys on it and put that $20 towards it. Kmart Supervisor Sameera Chatfield called him a “layaway angel.” Chatfield told the happy family later that their layaway angel was just 10-years-old.
The layaway angel trend is thought to have started in Michigan, but has spread across the country. One woman anonymously paid $500 while a man in Hayward, California came in with $10,000 in cash. He gave the layaway department $9,800 and the other $200 to the Salvation Army. One couple paid off an account with children’s toys and clothes because they said they didn’t have any children of their own.
The layaway angels may have started at Kmart, but they haven’t stopped there. A Wal-Mart in East Meadow, New York is seeing layaway angels too, although they are called Secret Santas there! Layaway accounts were paid off by two anonymous donors there, while donations were also occurring as far west as Washington.
I think this is a cool thing and wish I had known or thought about it myself before the holidays. I must keep it in mind next year. You never know who you are helping, but it has to feel good for all parties involved.