Casa Mesita

Casa Mesita Thrift Shop and Casa Mesita Group Home are separate organizations, both located in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Casa Mesita Thrift Shop
Casa Mesita Thrift Shop is a non-profit organization that operates a thrift shop. The thrift shop sells donated, mostly used goods. The organization is 100% volunteer run; it has no employees and pays no salaries and no wages. At times, the thrift shop has paid casual labor to transport unsellable items to the municipal dump.

The thrift shop benefits society by:


 * providing significant financial and other support to Casa Mesita Group Home
 * sending surplus donations on to Clothes for Kids, Salvation Army, an orphanage in Mexico, and other non-profit organizations
 * providing donors an efficient, socially and environmentally responsible way to discard usable material goods
 * providing Los Alamos with high quality goods at low cost
 * enriching retail shopping in Los Alamos

In 2005, Casa Mesita Thrift Shop purchased a larger single family house for the group home. The thrift shop was also the owner of the previous house that had been occupied by the group home. The group home pays no rent to the thrift shop.

Also in 2005, the thrift shop moved from its long term location on a back street (15th Street) to a storefront facing the local supermarket across a parking lot (Meri Mac shopping plaza). the new location increased traffic to the thrift shop but meant that the thrift shop no longer could accept as many donations of bulkier items such as large furniture, major household appliances (white goods), obsolete computers and computer peripherals, construction materials, and moving boxes. Alternative solutions for such items include donating to the Los Alamos chapter of Freecycle, and Restore. A local package shipper, UPEX, accepts donations of used foam peanuts.

Casa Mesita Group Home
Casa Mesita Group Home is a group home for up to 8 girls aged 12-18, founded in 1972 to shelter girls in need of a safe place to live. It is a United Way agency.