Book Sale 2006

Here you see what greeted my 7:30 am eyes on Wednesday. I am NOT a morning person! There were literally (pun!) piles of nasty, dirty, just trucked out of the shed they were stored in all winter, boxes of books waiting for me. My title for the day--- Organizer. Long ago, the boxes came to the sale location unsorted. You'd open a box and have to look at each book and have maybe 7 seconds each to decide "what is the subject". Now we have a team of three doing all that sorting 52 weeks a year. Another team carries all the boxed books to the shed. And in June , carries them to the sale. Then I take over. I have help. Some of my helpers have been coming back for more for more than five years. I save them the subjects they like. Bob and Barbara always set up Animals/Nature. Sam unpacks Biography, Mystery and Science Fiction. Phyllis and Al unpack Philosophy and Travel and Geography. Irma tackles Hardcover Fiction--200 boxes of fiction this year. Irma had on a crisp pink shirt and white (sheesh) pleated slacks. After unpacking all 200 boxes, she was as crisp and clean as when she walked in to the school gym. How do they do that? I was way beyond *filthy*. Children's belonged to Karen, Kathy and another Joanne. 200 boxes for them also. Louise and Peter tackled Gardening and then Hobbies/How To. I unpacked Cooking and piled books on dollies and moved them all over. This year I did not knock over any tables full of books.

To spice up what might have been a "so- so" experience, the school staff had a contractor and two helpers bust a hole in this wall. There had been a door there once, it was blocked up and now its a door again. Sledgehammers and repeated thumping of said hammer against a very sturdy wall---- headache time.

Here's a partial view of the finished product. I think I personally lifted and piled and transported most of the books (still in dirty boxes) that you see displayed here. We have a total of 50,000 books for sale this weekend. Yes, you read that correctly! Fifty thousand. We usually are finished setting up on Wednesday at 2 pm. Not so this year because of the number of books. We arrived Thursday morning at 7:30 am (twice in one year!) and started unpacking paperbacks (85 boxes), Collectibles, Music, Foreign Language, Women, Audio, Video, Records. Al and Gary spent two whole days breaking down a mountain of dirty cardboard boxes which Jan and John loaded in a pickup and took to recycling.

Was it worth it? We opened for business at 10 this morning and the line to get in was "ridiculous". Dealers from every surrounding state. By closing, we had already sold $21,000 worth of used books. The Friends of the Library use this money for children's programs, the summer reading club, science saturdays, and the community read (everyone in town reads the same book and then we have book discussions and interesting programs- last year it was Secret Life of Lobsters). We open for business at 10 tomorrow morning and then on Sunday it's $2.00 for a paper grocery sack of books. As many as you want. We raised $25,000 last year and I so want to make $28,000 or more this year. I'll let you know!

By the way, we really would like feedback---is ours the best sale you've heard of??? I know it's the nicest, best organized, cleanest--- because I take care of that. Order out of chaos. My Moment of Zen.