How to Prepare Books for Donation: A Minneapolis Guide

How Do You Prepare Books for Donation Pickup in Minneapolis?

Pack the books yourself, in advance, because a Local Pick-Up Partner arrives to collect what is already boxed and waiting and does not bring boxes.

1. Gather sturdy containers: moving boxes, banker's boxes, plastic totes, or doubled paper grocery bags.
2. Fill each container with books laid flat, spines alternating, so nothing shifts on the way to the vehicle.
3. Keep every box light enough for one person to carry alone. Split the heavy ones.
4. Do not sort. Hardcovers, paperbacks, DVDs, CDs, and video games can all ride together.
5. Tape the bottom seams twice, and in deep cold run a second strip across the top as well.
6. Set everything out by 8 AM on your service day, in a dry, covered spot.
7. Put a lid, a bag, or a plastic bin over the top if snow is anywhere in the forecast.

That is the whole job. Give My Books Network handles everything from the porch onward.

What Should You Pack Books In?

Sturdy boxes and doubled grocery bags both work. A single thin bag and a soggy cardboard flat do not.

Liquor-store boxes are the quiet favorite: small, thick-walled, and built for weight. Banker's boxes with lids are better still in a Minneapolis winter, because the lid is the snow protection. Plastic totes work fine if you do not need them back.

How Heavy Should a Box of Books Be?

Aim for a box one person can lift and carry to a vehicle without setting it down, which in practice means keeping it under about forty pounds.

Books are deceptively heavy. A large moving box packed full of hardcovers can pass eighty pounds, and eighty pounds on an icy front walk is how somebody gets hurt. Half-fill the big boxes. Fill the small ones.

Two half-full boxes beat one that nobody can move.

Where Should You Set Boxes Out in a Minneapolis Winter?

The covered front porch is the right spot in Minneapolis: dry overhead, visible from the street, and out of the plow's reach.

Nearly every house here has a second option, which is the alley garage. If your porch is exposed, set the boxes just inside the garage service door and note it when you schedule. Plows throw a wall of snow across the alley mouth after a storm, so if the alley has not been cleared, the porch wins.

Snow emergencies move every car on the block. If one is called for your service day, the porch is still fine, and your Local Pick-Up Partner will work around it.

Why Packing Tape Fails in Deep Cold

Packing tape loses its grip in deep cold, because the adhesive goes brittle and a seam that held indoors lets go on the porch.

The fix is simple. Double-tape every seam, top and bottom, and press it down hard while the box is still warm inside the house. Then carry it out.

And set the box out the morning of your pickup, not the night before. A cardboard box on a snowy porch overnight is finished within the hour once wet snow starts falling.

If you wonder why so much care goes into a donation that costs nothing, the American Library Association's guide to book donation programs is blunt about how much donated material arrives unusable.

Do You Need to Sort Anything Before a Minneapolis Pickup?

No sorting is needed before a Minneapolis pickup, since Give My Books Network partners sort everything offsite after collection.

"Should I separate hardcovers from paperbacks?" Nope. "Do children's books go in a different bag?" They don't. "What about the DVDs and that crate of vinyl?" Same box is fine.

Here is what partners do afterward. Many items are redistributed to schools, libraries, nonprofits, and literacy programs through the Give ME Books program, and some are resold, which is what funds the free pickup. Give My Books Network partners are family businesses rather than 501(c)(3) nonprofits, so no tax receipt is issued.

Or browse all Minneapolis donation services including Textbook Donations, Doorstep Book Pickup, Estate Book Pickup.