Destination Essay

A little over a year ago, my grandmother and my mother opened a store together in an industrial area of Bay Shore. Before the opening of the store, it was going to be a custom skirt manufacturer for Christian women, which would be run by my grandmother and it was also going to be a headquarters for my mother's drapery business. We opened the store with racks of fashionable skirts that my grandmother designed and books of examples of my mother's upholstery jobs. Slowly the store has become highly disorganized and incredibly messy. We have collected many random items and have put them for sale in the front section of our store. The middle section that customers can see but do not walk into, regularly has scrap material of fabrics, zippers, buttons and unfinished orders covering the floor and tables. The children in the family are often in the store during work hours, so customers can see toys blanketing the floor or hear kids screaming. A curtain separates the middle and back of the store and if you walk behind it, you will see the messiest part of the store. My grandfather turned one side of our workspace into a storage unit for his tools and woodworking. Non-working sewing machines line one of the walls and miscellaneous fabrics lay on shelves surrounding the room.

When first entering the store, you can see a desk holding business cards from other establishments in the area. They are often empty holders because no one refills them and because of the wind, the cards fly around and sometimes are scattered on the table or the floor. When you walk further into the store, the signs we print out of Microsoft Word and tape onto the counter and walls overpower you. It is used as a newsletter to let customers know any change in hours and new specials for the week. The racks that once held skirts designed and handmade by my grandmother are now empty. Once they sold all the skirts, they never restocked them. Now most people come into the store for the dry cleaning and tailoring. We have become a drop-off dry cleaner and my grandmother does alterations on clothes people bring in, rather than making more skirts. The floor is hardly ever vacuumed so it is often covered in leaves people bring in and dirt from their shoes. After my grandfather got laid-off, he started collecting junk furniture that people throw out and fixing them up. The shop has become his storefront also. We have pieces of furniture that he fixed and repainted taking up floor space in the shop. The mannequins that used to hold women's clothing, now hold outfits that were made in Africa. They have signs on them that state 100% of the sale will go back to Africa and to the people that made them. In one of the corners, we have shelves holding fabrics for sale by the yard.

Behind the counter, you can see one of the cutting tables my grandmother uses for tailoring jobs. When the orders come in, they are stacked on her cutting table, so it's covered most of the time by piles of clothes and sticky notes attached to them with instructions for tailoring. The sewing machine next to the cutting table is where most of the tailoring is done. Scrap strings and pieces of fabrics are always on the floor because she doesn't sweep after she finishes a job. When the kids in the family are in the shop, they often run in and out of the office and spread their toys all over the floor. We started stacking boxes on top of the sheet rock that forms a ceiling over our office. The boxes are full of random items that members of the family do not have space for in their own houses. The desk that holds our office computer is always covered with our mail that rarely gets opened. The kids have a mini table with matching chairs that are covered with crackers, cookies and bottles. They sometimes make it to the other tables in the shop too.

When the ceiling to floor curtain is opened, you're exposed to the messiest part of the store. When you first enter, you're not even sure where to look. Along the right side of the back part of the store, We have a row of non-working sewing machines. Some just have a few parts missing and need to be repaired. They have been sitting there for over a year and still haven't been fixed. In the middle of our back room, we have another very long cutting table that is about 15 feet long. Under that table, you can find various tools, wood pieces and broken furniture that my grandfather collected in his travels. The store also accepts donations to send to different countries so we have many random items such as clothes, couches, computers and mannequins waiting to be shipped. In the back corner, we have a small kitchen area where we have squeezed in a small refrigerator, toaster oven, and microwave. The table next to our appliances is covered with plastic utensils, sugar packets, syrups, ketchup packets and a few plates and napkins. Along the left side of the back room, several shelving units hold fabrics varying colors, prints, textures and lengths. Finding a specific one would be impossible because we do not have a system to our shelves of fabrics.

The main focus of the shop was going to be a skirt manufacturer. We soon after added a drapery business also. Then we added a drop-off dry cleaner and tailoring services. We then added furniture store, donation center, storage unit, and daycare to our store uses. The organizing system for orders is non-existant and cleaning rarely gets done. We have lost the focus of the shop and when you walk in, the store is so cluttered that you are not really sure what we are selling. Every section of the store has exploded into something that it was not supposed to be. The mess takes away from the business' original focus. The store has become a huge mess over the past year that we have been open.