Encyclopedias re-homed! @buynothingproject saves the day again!
I’m helping a neighbor to downsize their home and declutter and one of the things they needed to rehome was a 1976 set of Encyclopedias. Now as far as my neighbor, her friend the original owner of the books, and myself new, people just used these to cut out the pictures for crafts so I wasn’t sure I could rehome them. To put out a feeler per se, I posted on my local Buy Nothing Project Facebook group to find out if there was any interest before we moved them because 30 encyclopedia books are very heavy.
Several families were interested!. So to make the decision/tie breaker, I asked them why they were excited about having encyclopedias. The answers were for nostalgia and to actively use with their families. Homeschool families might also be of good option if you have a local group that could benefit from having the tangible books for research. I chose the family that wanted to share with their grandkids. The nostalgia is very valid, I had a set growing up as well until my mom got sick of moving them between houses so much. We moved several times growing up.
I did check with the Inside Books Project, “an Austin-based community service volunteer organization that sends free reading materials to people incarcerated in Texas” however the books are too heavy and therefore too expensive to ship to prisons so they do not accept encyclopedias. It’s not a bad idea to check with a local prison or other group that has a library in your area, they may have volunteers or a way to get a set of encyclopedias moved.
These are boxed up with produce boxes from Costco. The boxes are very sturdy and it was easy to move the books with them. I needed three orange boxes to fit all 30 books in.
When posting to Buy Nothing, for things like books be sure to include pictures of the entire set, the publication year page, and examples of the pages so people can see what kind of layout is available. This set’s photos are shown below.
#encyclopedias#declutter#downsizing#rehome#organization#buynothing