I am back to regular - once a week - posting. My intention is to post photos of the flowers blooming in my yard this year, so my posting rate may pick up then. That will be a fun project!
Please note - my husband and I listen to all our books these days. We are audio book people 100%.
Decluttering books is a whole topic/category in itself.
At one time we had full bookshelves all over the house.
The kids and I are huge readers. We are very pro library, but still had managed to each collect/hoard large collections of books. And we have a relative who sent hardcopy books, to us for years, as gifts.
All our books have been culled many times in the last decade or so. The cullings happened as very organized projects.
We have a large built in bookshelf in our living room (old picture, above, when I was shopping for new TV stand, but it shows the shelves).
Previously, these shelves were full AND we had other bookshelves, full of books, all over the house. And we had stacks of books in various places they did not belong.
Remember, only my husband and I live here, and neither of us read hardcopy. We are both audio book people, 100%.
We now have a means of measuring/controlling the volume of books in our house. We keep only what fits on the shelves in our living room.
If we find a book, somewhere in the house, that we want to keep, it has to fit comfortably on the living room bookshelf.
If it does not fit, we have to one-in-one-out. This means we have to get rid of a book or two to make room. The books that are culled cannot go elsewhere in the house, they have to be rehomed. Self rule.
We recently discovered piles of books in a cluttered area of our house.
My husband took these books to used bookstore #1. They bought many, but not all, of them. Used bookstore # 1 is locally owned.
Then middle cleaned out the books at her house. And we found more books at our house. I took her eliminated books and our books to used bookstore #2. Please note used bookstore #2 is a chain. There is a note at the bottom of this post about selling to chain used bookstores.
I went in (used bookstore #2, chain) with five boxes -
One of the books they did not want was a local medical directory from 2007. I sent a photo of it to the genealogy department at the library. They wanted it.
I donated the last two books to a local resale shop.
Note - used bookstore #2 is part of a national chain. They advertise “we take all books”. Yes, they take them all, but they do not want them all. They pitch what they do not want. I am not okay with throwing books in a dumpster. I ask them to only take what they want and return the rest to me.
Second note - I listed most of these books for sale, individually on Facebook Marketplace, first. They did not sell. When they did not sell, we tried the local used bookstores. I have sold large collections of books and individual books on Facebook Marketplace in the past. For whatever reason, these particular books did not sell. I have sold books to the used bookstores previously, sometimes they want them, sometimes they do not.
