Shepherdstown resident Rowan Cruise, right, chats with her daughter, Luna, as her son, Aeris, picks out a pair of snow boots at the Back-to-School Clothing Swap in the Shepherdstown Public Library on Saturday. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — The first annual Back-to-School Clothing Swap was held at the Shepherdstown Public Library (SPL) on Saturday.

The idea to hold a clothing swap prior to the beginning of the school year was thought up by SPL Adult Services librarian Addison Reese, who then worked together with SPL Youth Services librarian Jessie Ward to turn it into a successful event.

“We had talked about doing this for a long time,” Reese said. “Everyone has told us that they thought this event was amazing and that they hope we will do it again, which I’m sure that we will!”

According to Reese, at least 30 local families donated bags of gently-used clothing at the library over the past week. For each bag donated, the donor would be given a ticket to use on Saturday morning, the day of the swap, to fill up a bag with clothes that they could use for school. The clothes that were not purchased with a ticket in the morning were then made available in the afternoon for parents to pick up for their kids to use in the coming school year.

“I have kids and I was a teacher for a long time, so the need for a clothing swap like this seemed pretty obvious,” Reese said. “When my kids were really little, I loved doing clothing swaps with friends. But not everybody has those groups of people to swap clothing with. It’s such a great thing to be able to do.”

For Reese, clothing swaps are beneficial for two different reasons — they save money, as parents aren’t forced to purchase quite as much for their children at the beginning of the school year, and they practice conservation, by ensuring less new clothing is having to be produced and, thereby, less clothing is sent to the landfill. She noted that a lot of children grow too fast to wear out all of their clothing.

“We wanted to hold this in the summer, before people did their back-to-school shopping, so they could see what is available for them to supplement their stuff with,” Reese said. “You can’t replace an entire wardrobe at an event like this, but you can find random pieces that you can use and then build a wardrobe around that.”

Ward noted that, with Jefferson County K-12 students returning to school on Aug. 19, it was important to hold the clothing swap a few weeks prior to that. In the years to come, she and Reese plan on holding the clothing swap either on the last Saturday in July, as they did this year, or on the first Saturday in August.

“We were going to do it next weekend, until we noticed that an art show was beginning then,” Ward said. “Thankfully, the calendar was open for today, so we were able to make this Saturday work instead!”

Shepherdstown resident Rowan Cruise and her children, Shepherdstown Elementary School fourth grader Luna and Paige Jackson Elementary School first grader Aeris, were having a lot of fun looking through the items at the clothing swap.

“The timing works out well,” Cruise said. “This was just something we happened upon, because we try to go to the library once a week.”

Cruise, who is a realtor, noted that events like this can be a huge help to families.

“A lot of the families that I see have got their eggs in a lot of other baskets,” Cruise said. “The ones I see that need assistance aren’t going to readily come out and say, ‘Hey, I need assistance.’ A lot of them don’t realize that the community can back them really well. And that’s why events like these are so important!”