Right now my husband and I are working on packing up about half our house since we're putting on an addition. You never know how much stuff you have until you have to move it one way or another. So far we have packed and stored nearly 150 boxes of books. We have lots of furniture and other stuff to store.

I'm hoping to get rid of a lot of stuff when we move it back in, but there is a lot we can't let go because it has significance either to the two of us or because of the family history.

Why not donate them to the library?

If they can't use them on their shelves,
they sell them at a book sale and have the $$ to use.

Some belonged to our parents or grandparents - one was given to my ? great grandmother in 1817 before she left Lincolnshire to come to the US. We have a large collection of Ace Doubles and a collection of classic science fiction that date from the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s.

In addition to the historical or collectible, we have wide ranges of interests and the local library does not include those subjects indepth in their collection. In order to cover what we want to know, we have to have our own books. In fact, some of the books in my interest area came from the public library when they purged their collection of the more detailed books. I snapped them up since I would no longer be able to consult them when I needed to.

Books we do not need any longer go to friends or to the Friends of the Library for them to add to the collection or sell, so we do support the local library.