Museum looks to holiday boutique to bring budget joy
Like so many other nonprofits, the Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum’s budget was hit hard by the pandemic restrictions. Having to cancel the Victorian teas and two garage sales this year stripped the museum of its biggest fundraisers. The upstairs meeting room, a popular spot for events, could not be rented out, and the museum store collected dust while it was closed for business.
While the museum itself will not open for some time yet — a tentative plan for January is in the works, depending on the development of the pandemic over the winter — the museum store is open for holiday shopping on Thursdays and Sundays, 1-4 p.m.
Museum store volunteers have prepared the setting for a safe shopping experience, expanding the store to the museum foyer to make room for social distancing. There are tables with specific holiday gifts and decor, along with an array of unique vintage items, lace and embroidered table linens, china and crystal, jewelry and scarves. Gifts for children include a selection of books for young readers, games, dolls and felted purses, and the adult reader will find material on local history and biographies as well as historical novels.
The boutique will follow regular pandemic protocols. Shoppers must wear a face covering before entering the museum building. In case someone forgets, there will be extra disposable masks at the front desk. Hand sanitizer will be dispensed to everyone who enters, and a social distance of 6 feet must be observed.
A plexiglass shield has been installed in front of the cash register to keep both shoppers and staff safe. Visitors may not walk through the museum exhibits, and bathroom use is not permitted.
The volunteers who run the museum are looking to the holiday boutique to help with operating costs, which included replacing a furnace at the beginning of the year. Masked and shielded, these volunteers, along with museum director Laura Babcock and board president Dixie Larsen volunteers are dropping by regularly to execute a variety of tasks.
Regular maintenance checks at the museum include running faucets and flushing toilets to make sure the plumbing works, and looking for traces of a persistent critter digging up the pathways. Babcock is busy writing grant applications, which are even more important for the budget in these times. Babcock and Larsen answer both the mail and telephone messages and process research requests. A group of archivists are doing their research and cataloguing in the museum’s workroom, which has been expanded and reconfigured to allow for social distancing.
The door to the Heritage Park Museum may be closed, but the wheels have not stopped turning inside the building.
The Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum is located at 570 E. Remington Drive. For more information, call 408-749-0220 or email info@heritageparkmuseum.org.