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.)
If I were you I would take all the boxes of books to a local charity shop and donate them! Don’t look inside the boxes!! I was a hoarder of books until I realized that they were better off being read, than sitting on a shelf in my house. We keep technical style books, a few old classics (I have a 10th year edition of Little Women!!) and only the fiction we will reread, or we think the kids will enjoy. When I was a child my mom and I were the only readers, so every Christmas we brought some of my books to the localish orphanage and hers to the Nursing home. I have given away all of the kids books as they outgrow them to friends. We have just talked to the library staff about donating some kids books to them–they will take a look and take what they need. I love to see them being read and loved by more people!
a lot of these books are very precious to me, and ones that I do read and reread. So sorry, but I will be going through the boxes.
I think I will be donating a few. We’ve been discussing a plan tonight actually….more to follow.
What a lovely Christmas gift! My friend’s mum set up a mobile library in Kenya and she received an MBE for it… truly well-deserved.
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