I’ve been busy at church the last few months. I joined a new church last summer, and not only am I jumping in with regular church activities, but I was also preparing for our church’s 150th Anniversary celebration earlier this month cleaning, clearing, organizing and revitalizing the space. Church muscles were grown and I am so grateful once again to God and how He grew me for this time in this place right now.
So my church has a library, and it’s delightful! Turns out we were holding our own version of a Little Free Library before the program existed. Take a book, leave a book, on a book cart we rolled out during events and worship. That concept kind of fell out of interest with both digital books coming into existence and COVID, so we did a bit of culling on the novels and free books. We still have all our resource and reference books as well as books from the United Women in Faith Reading Program.
The cleared books were taken to Recycled Reads, a bookstore run by the Austin Public Library. The store is beautiful, peaceful, well run and it’s a great way for the library to resell books, or to host reuse events to make crafts out of the unsellable books. There are a few guidelines to follow:
Donations
- Anytime during open business hours – 2 grocery bags or standard boxes (e.g., copy paper or banker’s) or less
- All other by appointment only: recycled.reads@austintexas.gov
- We are not able to pick up donations.
The bookstore accepts:
- All printed material except for magazines
- CDs and LPs
- DVDs and Blu-Rays
- Art and ephemera
- Complete board games and puzzles
- VHS
- Audio Cassettes
We ask that all donations be brought in either grocery bags or standard sized boxes (e.g. bankers’, copy paper sized, book boxes, small moving boxes, similar or smaller but no larger please) that are closeable, stackable and that you do not need returned to you.
Important! All donations must be free of pests, insect eggs, mold, etc.
Please call 512-974-7463 if you have other specific items to donate.
https://library.austintexas.gov/recycled-reads-bookstore#arrbfaq
Now I will share that we did have a selection of books that ended up in a shed, and they had been damaged by the weather and animals tearing them up for bedding. So please store books properly or clear them out as soon as possible for others to store safely and enjoy.
Happy reading! Happy cleanout! Happy books!
#books #library #churchcleanout #librarycleanout #reuse #resell #littlefreelibrary #lesslandfill