A Home for Everything

Sharon Baugh’s bin store in rural Georgia starts out as a small business, a way to support her family, but soon becomes a lifeline to an economically disadvantaged community. The store resells discounted returns from major retailers - returns that would normally end up in landfill - and these forgotten items have a seismic impact in the small town.

Project type: Nonfiction Short
Project status: Post Production
Director/Producer/Editor: Amanda Roddy
Executive Producer: Muffie Meyer
 
Website: gristmillfilms.com
 
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Logline

Sharon Baugh’s bin store in rural Georgia starts out as a small business, a way to support her family, but soon becomes a lifeline to an economically disadvantaged community. The store resells discounted returns from major retailers – returns that would normally end up in landfill – and these forgotten items have a seismic impact in the small town.

Synopsis

Trenton is a very small, low-income, religious community in the northwest corner of the state. A Home for Everything follows life in a bin store, Mom N’ Pops, over the course of the store owner, Sharon Baugh’s, final year running the business and documents firsthand the transformational impact the store has on the people who live there.

Bin stores resell returns to major retailers (e.g., Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, etc.) at a steep discount. When these products don’t end up in stores like Sharon’s, they often are sent to landfills. In 2021 alone, retail returns in the US totaled $761 billion dollars (roughly the size of the US’ military budget) and a quarter of those returns are thrown away. These discarded items are often new or in excellent condition and include critical goods like wheelchairs, adult diapers, and classroom tools for children — all of which are stocked along the long tables in Sharon’s store.

On Friday morning, outside the store, a long line forms down the block in the tiny town –– people huddle together, waiting for the store to open in the cold December weather. Through verite scenes we learn more about her customers and why they come to the store. Stories range from a mother who recently lost her son who needs someone to talk to, a cancer survivor who buys a bed from Sharon that accelerates and improves her recovery, and a caregiver shopping for sanitary goods for a local nursing home.

As the demand for Sharon’s humanity and affordable access to these products rapidly increases, the workload starts to become too great for one woman to bear. Sharon contends with the difficult choice of either continuing to support this disadvantaged community or stepping away to care for her own family who needs her.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Amanda Roddy – Director/Producer/Editor
Amanda is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. She is the producer and co-writer of Not Going Quietly, which premiered at SXSW ‘21 and won both the audience award and special jury award for Humanity in Social Action. Not Going Quietly was nominated for two Emmys and is executive produced by the Duplass brothers and Bradley Whitford and was acquired by Hulu, Greenwich Entertainment, POV, and Vice.

She has directed, produced, and written projects for clients such as the Democratic National Convention, Elizabeth Warren’s presidential Campaign, Equal Justice Works, The Nature Conservancy, and The Equity Fund.

Her work has been supported by the International Documentary Association, Rooftop Films, Film Independent, IFP, and HBO.

Muffie Meyer – Executive Producer
Muffie Meyer was born in New York City and raised in Chicago. A literature and Medieval history student in college, she returned to attend New York University’s film school in 1967. She moved quickly from her first job mimeographing scripts to film editing.

Her early credits include The Lords of Flatbush, starring Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler, and Groove Tube, starring Chevy Chase, a film precursor to “Saturday Night Live.” Meyer co-directed Grey Gardens with the pioneering cinema verite documentarians David and Albert Maysles, and Ellen Hovde. She also edited the film with Ellen Hovde. Part of her gift for creating gripping cinema like The Crash of ’29 and Liberty! The American Revolution reflects her own broad-ranging interests. A self-described “intellectual dilettante,” she is an avid reader of scientific and medical journals, history books, and detective novels. Meyer is married to Ronald Blumer. They have a daughter, Emma, and live in New York City.

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Contact

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