Moving Down Day

 

Moving day for our annual library fundraising book sale has come and gone. I thought I would share a few pictures of it for your enjoyment. Here is my dolly of books heading down the freight elevator to the main floor where the books will be offered up for sale soon. Although my dolly could hold more, I limited myself to 28 boxes at a time which weighed around 1000 pounds or about half a ton. If I stacked them any higher, it made it harder to see where I was going and increased the likelihood I would run into something or perhaps spill part of my load. In order to take this picture, I was backed into the corner next to the door with my phone held inches from my face and zoomed completely out as far as it would go. It is tight quarters with a half ton of books in a small elevator. Even though the dolly makes moving all that weight down to the sale floor easier, we still life each box onto the dolly and then lift it off the dolly and put it on one of the rows of display tables where they will be sold. It is a major workout.

To make things more exciting, I caught my first head cold in about two years about two days earlier. Colds, besides the obvious affects of runny sinuses or coughs, make my body feel like it has run over by a steamroller. I can treat myself to dry up the sinuses and lubricate the throat so that it doesn't itch but I can't do much for the achy body feeling and lack of energy. I woke up on the day of the move feeling about 50% but soldered on to my first gig of the day counting money for the church. After depositing the money in the bank, I drove the few short blocks to the place where we sort and move the books still not entirely sure I was going to go inside. In the end I decided I would at least go in for awhile and as I moved books around, I began feel a little better all the time... at least until we got to the last five or six loads and by then I was feeling thoroughly whooped.

But I was able to persevere and got all the boxes of books that had been pre-sorted for the sale, carted downstairs and into place on the showroom floor to the corresponding table where they were offloaded. There, dozens of others were unpacking the boxes and arranging them on tables for the event where they will be sold for $2 per hardback and $1 per paperback for the first two days and then by the sack for $10 on the final day. 

Exactly one week from now, hopefully head cold now a memory, I will return and begin the process of hauling some of the unsold books back up into storage for next year. The powers that be will severely cull them first though weeding out books that likely no one will ever buy to be taken to the recycling center. Reading tastes change over the years and what sold great in the past might not sell great anymore. The recycling center however is a constant. But some books just get overlooked in the chaos and rather than destroy them, they give them a second chance for the following year. I get a second smaller workout trundling those books back upstairs.

Below is a picture of the area where we sell the books to give you an idea for scale. The boxes in the foreground are all the games that will eventually be unpacked and displayed for sale at $1 each. The long rows of tables going off into the far distance are all the books getting unpacked. When I took this photo, most of the unpackers were still off at lunch. I knew if I stopped for lunch I would never come back so I worked through lunch hauling boxes with a few other like minded individuals.