“Good Cheer’s Dave Phelps sorts garbage from donations after weekend donors filled the sidewalk with their old household goods.Matt Johnson / staff photoSometimes, you have to say no.Dave Phelps was in no mood to see any more of somebody else’s junk when he said that last Monday morning. Phelps, an employee at Langley’s Good Cheer Thrift Store, sorted through mounds of donations left on the store’s sidewalk over the weekend. Most of it – from a 15-year-old computer to pieces of broken furniture – was destined for the landfill.Good Cheer and South Whidbey’s other two thrift stores, Senior Thrift and WAIF Thrift, are getting swamped by the summer clean-out season. Managers at Good Cheer and Senior Thrift say they are taking in a lot of garbage along with saleable donated items. The garbage, said Good Cheer manager Brenda Thorn, is a drain on charitable funds her store raises through sales.We pay over $500 a month in dump fees, she said.The piles of stuff left at the store last weekend were so large that they almost blocked the sidewalk. Whoever left the items either did not see or ignored signs posted in the store’s windows that tells donors not to leave items outside when the store is closed.Off-hours donations like this are both a plague and a blessing for all three of South Whidbey’s thrift stores. Though her store is taking in a huge amount of items this summer, Bayview Senior Thrift store manager Jenny Crichton said she and her staff don’t have time to sort it.There’s so much stuff coming in, we can’t process it all, Crichton said. During the summer, processing means separating garbage from items the store can sell. Crichton said some people have left off bags of household garbage and items covered with vomit. During business hours, store employees can screen donations and send people away who try to do their trash disposal at her store. Store employees also flag old typewriters, some computers, and old sewing machines because, Crichton said, they do not sell. These items and the garbage are a financial drain on the store. Crichton said the business has spent about $1,400 on garbage disposal this year. That is $1,400 that will not go to the store’s beneficiary, Senior Services of Island County.Good Cheer has a similar sorting process, but not on Sundays. Thorn said the volume of donations left on the sidewalk on those days has forced her to send an employee to the store to move things inside before the start of the week. Langley’s city ordinances require the store to keep the sidewalk clear.Dave Phelps said the Sunday monitoring also gets valuable items into the store before passersby can pick them out without paying for them.Neither Thorn nor Crichton want to discourage South Whidbey residents from donating to their stores. Without donations they have nothing to sell. But in the interest of giving her staff a break, Crichton said she hopes donors will delay some of their summer clean out into the fall and winter.If you want to clean out, clean out some in December, she said. WAIF Thrift store manager Mary Poolman also said her store is swamped by donations made at nights and on weekends. Donors have ignored signs stating that the Freeland store does not take large items and warning donors against blocking the sidewalk with the things they leave. Poolman said she and her staff can do their job best when donors drop items off between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday. No one is at the store Sundays to take donations.The WAIF store benefits the Whidbey Animal Improvement Foundation’s shelters in Freeland and Coupeville. “