In anticipation of the annual Parish Book Fair, I took a few hours to go through my ten sets of shelves to discover how many books I could donate to the sale. Determined to purge and de-clutter, I was able to get rid of some of the important books I have read that really helped to shape my thinking while I was a young mother.
138 books were loaded into the back of the van, but I didn't get to all my shelves in the time period allotted.
In addition, 65 videotapes were donated as we no longer have a functional VCR. Most of these movies are available on NetFlix if we ever wanted to watch them again so we don't have any need to store them.
We put it on the calendar and arrived at the sale with a little bit of cash, ready to pick out some reading material for the year!
The church ladies received donations on Friday and worked all day to sort through and classify the books by type.
It was pleasant to slowly peruse the thousands of titles looking for something that I have heard of and wanted to read or to check out something new on a topic that I am interested in.
I saw many people that I knew there and we had fun discussing different books on the tables that we had read.
At these prices, we didn't hesitate to pick up and set aside anything that might be good. Before we paid, we went through everything and eliminated many that we didn't really need.
The children's section is notoriously weak. It seems to be the older adults that donate books. One woman pointed out that most folks donate back the books they bought the previous year. That was certainly true in our case. What a great money maker for the church ladies' group in this book recirculation!
We were not the only folks getting rid of videotapes. It was obvious to see that this technology is becoming obsolete by the table full of donations.
We bought a boxful which cost us 23 dollars. Those books will be stored on the shelves which now have room for them after the purge. It will be fun to select a book to read from the queue throughout the year and then donate it back when finished.
