Had an interesting experience getting rid of lots of old books. For years, we've been selling them, off and on, to a big used bookstore a couple of hours away from us (when we're in the area for something else); this particular store has always bought a lot from us, but the last time we were there (maybe a year ago), they only bought a couple of books because they were "overstocked." Hoping the situation had changed, yesterday we brought 6 boxes to sell, 2 of which we were pretty sure wouldn't actually sell but which the store had told us to bring anyway. We ended up selling 8 books, for $20 in trade (not cash—usually they give you a choice, but this time they didn't). So if you calculate all the hours it took us to decide which books to sell, put them all in boxes, load them into the car, move them from the car to the store, and bring them back to the car, this was definitely not a financially worthwhile undertaking! 😲 Today I brought the 2 boxes that I'd been pretty sure wouldn't sell to our local library's donation site, where they were actually really happy to get them and said these books would be big sellers at the upcoming book sale. That was gratifying to hear—I wish more donation places made you feel that way (really hard when you bring a bunch of things to Goodwill and they just take them and throw them into a large container or the back of a truck 😧). Anyway, we're going to be near another big used bookstore next week, so I figure we might as well give the 4 remaining boxes a try there (sunk-cost effect!), after which we'll donate any remaining. But this does drive home the frequently made point that the things we think (or even know) have monetary value may not actually sell and may end up being a waste of time and energy to try to sell. There's definitely something to be said for packing everything up you no longer want and just donating it. Very tempting, but I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet!! 😳

Posted by Dreamer at 2022-04-25 18:51:18 UTC