Friends will know that I’m quite fond of books.
That may be an understatement.
There are books everywhere here. On the table. On the coffee table. Under the table. On the craft shelves. In the baby’s toybox (those are the baby’s books. Mainly.) The children have bookshelves in their bedroom. We have bookshelves in our bedroom. And there are boxes and boxes and boxes in the garage that haven’t been rescued yet since our move. (Poor books 🙁 )
I like to share the love of books, particularly at Christmas. The children always have at least one book on their christmas pile and often more than that.
But, shock horror, these books aren’t always new…
I believe in regifting. I also believe in secondhand. My kids do too – and they know that our favourite bookshop is actually the Red Cross Charity shop just down the road. There are some fantastic finds in there, and while I’d never give an obviously battered book as a present outside of family, if it’s something you just can’t get new any more, surely secondhand is better than not at all?
So when I looked at the Oxfam Unwrapped series of charity gifts for the Who’s the Mummy Simplify your Christmas carnival, it was obvious which gift I was going to choose.
Oh, I wish I did have £429 to give to build a library somewhere that needs one. It fits beautifully with my vision of education too, as expounded yesterday 🙂 Can you imagine? Building a library, filling it with books, and computers, training staff to run it and best of all, setting children free in it.
Joy.
Buying secondhand books for Christmas saves money, as well as increasing recycling, cutting down on the amount of bumph given out and generally being good for us and the books. Buying ethical gifts from Oxfam (or indeed any other charity!) with any money you save by buying secondhand presents (doesn’t have to just be books, our charity shops here are full of stuff that is sometimes even brandnew and donated!) is a great way to simplify Christmas and feel good about yourself, as well as giving a little back to ppl who have nothing.
Go on, you know you want to.
(Disclosure. This post was written for the Simplify your Christmas carnival. It is not sponsored in any way, shape or form. So there you go.)
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