Donating 500 Books to Betterworld!

It's been a busy week!

Anyone who owns a lot of books will know just how difficult it is to even move the furniture in a room without spending at least a few hours rearranging your bookshelves, too. Well, when it comes to moving house, that task increases tenfold.

Guess what I'm doing this week...

Having now gone through the exhausting process of transporting my enormous book collection between locations several times, when I decided I was moving yet again, I also decided it was about time I addressed the issue of my books. Why? Well, quite simply, I don't have room for them anymore. Over the years, the collection has split between three households: my dad's, my mum's, and my own.

Owning too many books is, for the most part, a dream come true—but when there are over 700 titles in the collection and you know (even though you don't want to admit it) that you'll probably never even pick up 80 per cent of the books on your shelves again...well, it's probably time to downsize.

The time has come. I have to get rid of my books. I've been hoarding them for a lifetime, but I can't keep hold of them forever.

Trouble is, books are very difficult things to get rid of when you have a lot of them. And I need mine gone, like, now. So I searched for a solution that would see my books land in the hands of people who would really appreciate them, because there are so many out there who don't have access to books so easily (and this is one of the reasons I value sites like Wattpad so much, for opening a whole library of books up to everyone to read for free!).

I used to work in public libraries, and I remembered a company we used to donate our old copies to: Betterworld. You can read more about the company by clicking here, but essentially, they take in book donations and use every single copy to raise money for literacy and reading charities and causes—which is something I fully support. None of the books, they claim, get incinerated, and they find a use for everything. Great!

So I emailed them, and the next day I opened my inbox to find that yes, they'd love to take a donation of 500 books.

Well, it was decided. I couldn't let them down now.

And that, in short, is why I've spent all day today sorting through my many shelves of books to figure out which ones I want to donate, and which ones I can't bear to part with.

So far on the list of keepers are:

• My whole collection of A Series of Unfortunate Events

• All my Lolita copies

• My '90s Point Horror collection

• Books by every author who has used my affordable book editing services!

Of course, there are so many books that are just too precious to me and I could never let go of them, so they'll be staying with me for the long-term. But, as for everything else, I'm hoping they'll end up in the hands of someone who really, really wants them.

So, stay tuned for another update! I'll let you know which books I decided to keep, and how many boxes I ended up donating to Betterworld.

For now, wish me luck with the move... It's going to be an exhausting one!