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What to do with books when you purge your house?

post #1 of 8
6/25/10 at 8:53pm
Thread Starter 
So dh and I are doing a MAJOR purge of our house. I have a collection of several thousand books. We are getting me a kindle and making a list of books I will want to slowly get back electronically. I am hoping to get the books down to around 100 or so.

So the books.... do I donate them to Goodwill? the library?

What do you do with that many books to get rid of?
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post #2 of 8
6/25/10 at 9:04pm
We donated to the library and Gotbooks.com
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post #3 of 8
6/25/10 at 9:05pm
we do a couple of things just depending on which is convenient to us at the time.

library: you might want to check if they'll take it as a donation. Ours takes popular fiction and other books what they dont use they have a quarterly book sale for proceeds to the library.

thrift store/goodwill/salvation army: some times of the yr ours no longer take books due to space issues but when they do we drop off there

prison: there is a major prison in our area that actually has an organization that does book pick ups for the prisoners. they take an assort of books and popular magazines

local military hospital: also does something similar where they collect books to send overseas and also for soldiers in local hospitals undergoing care.
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post #4 of 8
6/25/10 at 9:08pm
I threw a big open house a couple of weeks ago. I invited tons of families from my homeschool and mother's groups, local FB friends, family, etc and had a Garage Free. I set up all the stuff we were looking to get rid of on our porch and front room and just let people take what interested them. I got rid of probably about 300+ books that way. Still have a ton left, though, so I'll probably drop those at the library.
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post #5 of 8
6/25/10 at 9:08pm
That is a LOT of books! I would divide them up and donate some each day, week, or month....definitely NOT all at once. Any place would be overwhelmed with that quantity.

Are some of the books rare? Are some unique to certain populations? Do you want some money from them to offset the cost of replacement (electronic)?

Some ideas:

~ If you have any current textbooks, sell them to a used textbook store or donate them to a local college library.

~ Try a local used bookstore. Call first to see what they recommend (everything at once on consignment or a box at a time or certain books only or whatever).

~ Public school libraries (all levels) are underfunded in many areas.

~ Community libraries often sell the books they cannot use for circulation and use that money to buy appropriate books for circulation.

~ The last place I would donate books is to Goodwill, etc.

~ You can also Craiglist and freecycle them, if you have the time and energy to deal with all those people. (This would be higher up on my list if the quantity was lower.)
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post #6 of 8
6/25/10 at 11:28pm
Thread Starter 
Those are great ideas! I knew you guys would be able to come up with some ideas of places I would never think of.

A part of me really wants to sell many of them, like the national geographic books, but I know me and if I set them aside to sell then I will never get rid of them.

I had not thought of how overwhelming it would be to a single place to get that many books at once so thank you for pointing that out to me.

One of my close friends husband works at the prison the next county over so I will call there and see what sort of books they take as donations, history books maybe???

We have a great used book store close to here so I think I will try to give the bulk of them to there.

Our local library has a pitiful selection of AP or homeschooling books so I think I will pick those out specifically for the library along with my natural childbirth/breastfeeding books.

The kids books I am having a hard time with because many of them have been damaged. I dont think anyone would want a damaged book even if all the pages are still there, but I really hate seeing them just go into the trash. Some of them I could cut great pictures out of and put in my scrapbook box but honestly I dont know what to do with them.
The kids books that are still in good condition will probably go to the local shelter and goodwill.

Thank you all again, I dont know if it was just pregnancy mind or what, but I just couldn't think of anywhere but goodwill and the library. So if anyone thinks of somewhere else please let me know!
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post #7 of 8
6/26/10 at 5:33am
Kids books I tend to send wither to DSs preschool or the doctors or midwives office for their waiting rooms. Even when they are pretty battered they are usually better then the current waiting room selection.

If they are damaged beyond repair would a local school/preschool want them to cut up for the pictures. Would someone on freecycle want them for scrap-booking or something?
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post #8 of 8
6/26/10 at 9:16am
I took a bunch of my books to a local used bookstore and what they didn't want/take I took to the goodwill.
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