How to Prepare Books for Donation in Baltimore

How Do You Prepare Books for Donation in Baltimore?

Pack the books yourself, in advance, and set them out by 8 AM. Give My Books Network sends a Local Pick-Up Partner to collect what is already waiting at the door, so everything comes down to what you do the night before.

1. Gather the books. Shelves, closets, under the bed, the boxes by the basement steps.
2. Pack them into sturdy boxes, totes, or doubled grocery bags. Do not sort by type.
3. Keep every container light enough that one person can carry it alone.
4. Carry the boxes down to the first floor yourself. The partner collects from the door, not from a back bedroom.
5. Set them on the marble step, in the vestibule, or wherever you told the partner to look, by 8 AM.
6. Cover the cardboard if rain or snow is coming. A lid, a bag, an old shower curtain.
7. Go to work. The Local Pick-Up Partner collects between 8 AM and 8 PM.

What Should You Pack Books In?

Use whatever you already own that will hold weight: moving boxes, banker's boxes, plastic totes, sturdy shopping bags, or grocery bags doubled up. Give My Books Network partners do not bring boxes, so the container is on you.

Small boxes beat big ones every time. A liquor-store box, a copy-paper box, a produce box from the corner store. Big boxes only tempt you to fill them, and a filled big box of books is a hospital visit waiting to happen.

How Heavy Is Too Heavy for a Box?

If you cannot lift it comfortably with two hands and carry it ten feet, it is too heavy. Books are deceptively dense, and a medium box packed solid with hardcovers can pass forty pounds without looking like much.

Split it. Two half-full boxes are better than one nobody can move, and your Local Pick-Up Partner has a back that matters too.

• Paperbacks — you can fill a small box and still lift it.
• Hardcovers — half-fill, then top off with something light.
• Textbooks and encyclopedias — a third of a box is plenty. They are bricks.

Where to Set Boxes Out on a Baltimore Rowhouse

The stoop, the vestibule, or the covered spot right beside the front door. On a Baltimore rowhouse the front door opens straight onto the sidewalk, almost nobody has a driveway, and the marble steps are the natural set-out spot.

If your block runs one-way and stopping out front is genuinely impossible, or if you keep a parking pad off the alley behind the row, say so when you schedule. Partners work these blocks. A note like "alley side, blue gate, off Eastern Avenue" saves everybody ten minutes.

How to Keep Rain and Snow Off Your Boxes

Cover the cardboard. A box on a wet marble stoop softens fast, and Baltimore weather serves up humid summers, freeze-thaw winters, and the occasional nor'easter that arrives with no manners at all.

A tote lid, a contractor bag pulled over the top, a scrap of plastic sheeting, an old shower curtain. Any of it works. None of it takes more than a minute, and it is the difference between a box the partner can lift and a box that gives out on the sidewalk.

What You Do Not Have to Do

You do not have to sort, alphabetize, clean, or separate anything. Hardcovers, paperbacks, children's books, textbooks, CDs, DVDs, vinyl, board games, and video games can all ride together in the same box.

"Should I separate the kids' books?" Nope. "Do the DVDs go on their own?" They do not. Local Pick-Up Partners sort every collection offsite, which is the job they signed up for.

What Happens After a Baltimore Pickup

Local Pick-Up Partners sort every Baltimore collection offsite. Books with a market are resold, which is what funds the free pickup, and much of the rest is redistributed through the Give ME Books program to schools, libraries, literacy programs, and nonprofits.

Items with nothing left may eventually be recycled as a last resort. There is no tax receipt, because partners are family businesses rather than 501(c)(3) nonprofits. The Book Donation Programs guide from the American Library Association covers what receiving organizations can realistically absorb, and it is worth a look before you pack.

Or browse all Baltimore donation services including Large Quantity Book Pickup, Book Donation Drop-Off, Children's Book Donations.