Bye Bye Books

SATURDAY'S ITEMS: 

55 books that I've already read and don't plan to read again



This was NOT an easy thing to hand over!

I thought I'd kick off the project right, so after I posted "The Plan" I went straight into the office to clean out the bookshelves.  If you know me, then you know that it is extremely difficult for me to part with a book once I've acquired it.  Because of this, we have books stacked everywhere.  (Some of them I haven't read in several years.)  I decided to go through my books and get rid of anything that I haven't read lately or don't think I'll ever read again.   Of the 55 books I decided to part with, 10 of them are going to my classroom library, and the other 45 went to 2nd & Charles, my favorite used bookstore.  We stopped by 2nd & Charles on the way to dinner last night, and I turned in my 45 books.  They offered me $22.50 in store credit or $10.00 cash for 25 of the books. The other 20 were returned to me since they had too many copies of those in inventory already.  Since on of my project rules is that once an item leaves the house it cannot be brought back, and since I am trying to declutter, not find new things to purchase, I took the cash and put the remaining 20 books in the FREE bins.  IT FELT GREAT!  (Joe said I was crazy for putting 20 books in the FREE bins, but my main objective here is to get rid of stuff, not to make money.)

Speaking of Joe, I explained my project idea to him last night before we left home.  At the end of my explanation, I said "So do you want to do it with me?"  Before I could finish my sentence, he'd already said "No! I like my stuff!"  It took several minutes for me to convince him that even though there were a lot of things he liked and wanted to keep that surely there was something in the house that he didn't like/want/need anymore.  After much whining on his part, he reluctantly agreed to get rid of 2 books.  2nd & Charles offered him $2.45 in store credit, which he took and used to buy a book....  so, really he only gave away 1 book.  But, that's okay.  The rule is at least one item a day, and he did that, so I'm proud of him.  As hard as it was for me to get rid of 55 books, I think it might have been harder for him to get rid of his 1 book.  I hope that he'll become more enthusiastic about this as we go.  This morning, however, when I asked him what he was giving away today, he screamed "I hate this project!" lol. 



So, that's day one.  I think it was pretty successful.