Georgia’s Senator Zell Miller once said, “I’ve got more guns than I need but not as many as I want.” I know the feeling. I have more books than shelf space, but I still want more.
My home office is also our library, and it is overflowing with books I’m unlikely ever to re-read or refer to. The result is clutter. Nearly every surface is covered with books, and the surfaces that don’t hold books hold items displaced by books. I need to weed out, free some space for the new books I know I’ll buy. I can’t stop myself. I can only slow down when my shelves get full.
So I’ve begun weeding my library. I’ve resisted until now because I couldn’t decide what to do with the discards. Selling them would be arduous. There are book-buying web sites, but they pay so little that it’s not worth the time. The local used book store likewise also doesn’t pay enough, and its process is painful. Donating the books to the library or a charity thrift store and writing them off against my taxes requires making a list of what I’m donating. That’s going to be a long list, but it’s my best option. I can get it done in one weekend if I’m diligent. I only need to find enough boxes.
And stay out of the bookstore for a few weeks.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Terry Odell // Nov 25, 2009 at 9:58 am
Faced with having to de-clutter our house in prep for selling, we drastically reduced the number of books on the shelves. Many were put in boxes and moved to the POD, but some were ready for others to enjoy, as I knew I’d never read them again.
I don’t know why you have to itemize books to donate them, though. I track my donations through “It’s Deductible” and you simply make note of how many hard cover, how many paperback. The FMV of books isn’t all that great; it doesn’t matter what the title is or how much it cost initially. Although if you have a tax accountant, I’m sure their advice would supercede mine. All I know is it’s easy to enter a number into a program that then calculates the tax deduction than try to go through and name each specific book.
2 Sam // Nov 25, 2009 at 1:06 pm
I merely assumed that I had to. I didn’t know about “It’s Deductible.” Thanks for the tip!
3 Terry Odell // Nov 26, 2009 at 9:52 am
I think you can go to itsdeductible.com and download the tracking software. And if you use Turbo Tax, it’ll import all the data (I hope so, anyway.)
Leave a Comment