FARMINGTON – The expression, “One person’s trash is another’s treasure,” is no more apparent than in the basement of Franklin Hall at University of Maine Farmington.

A clearinghouse for a wide variety of recycled materials, Everyone’s Resource Depot was founded 25 years ago by Janet Basinger, an education major at the university in the late 1970s. According to official history, Basinger visited the recycling center at the Children’s Museum in Boston and the recently defunct Children’s Resource Center in Portland and modeled the depot after them. Its purpose is to encourage recycling and creative reuse of donated materials.

Recycling is a “fine Yankee idea,” said Mary Ryan, who has been coordinating activities at the depot almost since its inception in 1979.

The center receives donations of materials from area businesses and households that would otherwise end up in the dump. Discarded wood turnings from Kingfield Wood Products, sticky-backed vinyl from Signworks in Farmington, paper goods from Mickey’s Hallmark in Farmington and leather scraps and shoelaces from G.H. Bass are only a few of the myriad of materials lining the walls and filling bins in five low-ceilinged rooms.

Items are also obtained via a system of barter between similar centers throughout the state and New England.

Ryan said they once received an entire truck load of shoelaces from G.H. Bass. She tries to keep a wide assortment of supplies on hand and a truck load of shoelaces nearly filled her space. So, she traded those shoelaces for other overstock items at other similar centers. She barters with SHARE Center in Auburn, who, she believes, trades with centers all over New England affording an entire network of recycling retailers a diversity of materials.

Tuesday afternoon found several shoppers perusing the shelves and bins.

Jennifer Daniels, a freshman education major, was looking for items to put together a game based on her educational philosophy for a class. Her friend Katharine Eaton, visiting for the first time, hoped to turn trash to treasured Christmas presents.

In the paper room, Matthew McLarnon, said he was a regular. An artist by avocation, McLarnon said he made a chair sturdy enough to support the weight of his sculpture teacher completely out of cardboard from the depot. He spends between $20 to $30 each semester for art supplies there. He couldn’t estimate his savings from shopping there but said poster board alone costs twice as much elsewhere. Also, there are things there he would have trouble finding anywhere else.

“I don’t know what all the students would do without being able to come here and get supplies for projects,” he said. “All the students know about it.”

Along with donated materials and university services, volunteers and work-study students help run the shop. They’ve been very cramped in their basement space where they’ve been since the beginning. But they’ve been promised more space on the ground floor of the university’s new education center when it is built, said Ryan. She’s looking forward to having more space.

“It will be better in every way,” she said.

This weekend marks the recycled art supplier’s 25th anniversary.

There will be no big speeches, said Ryan of their celebratory open houses to be held Friday and Saturday.

Everyone’s Resource Depot is open to the public from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to noon Saturday and 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday and Thursday when the university is in session.

The Depot is open to the public from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, and 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday and Thursday when the university is in session.