What to Do With Old Books You No Longer Want: Top Options in 2026
Quick answer: Old books in Minneapolis have five good destinations in 2026: a free doorstep pickup from Give My Books Network, a Hennepin County Library branch sale, a school drive, a Little Free Library, or a program that has asked for titles. The pickup exists for the pile that will not fit in a car.
What Should You Do With Old Books You No Longer Want?
Old books you no longer want have five realistic destinations in Minneapolis, and the right one depends almost entirely on how big the pile is and whether you can carry it.
Deciding where to donate books in Minneapolis is really a question of volume, not virtue. A shelf's worth? A Little Free Library or a friend. A closet's worth? A branch sale or a school drive. A basement's worth? A free doorstep pickup, because nothing else on the list will come to you.
The Top Options in Minneapolis for 2026
Minneapolis offers five options for old books in 2026, each suited to a different pile, and each with an honest drawback worth knowing before you load the car.
Where to Donate Books You No Longer Want
Give My Books Network collects donated books free from Minneapolis doorsteps, in any quantity and any readable condition. Pack the boxes, set them out by 8 AM, and a Local Pick-Up Partner collects them between 8 AM and 8 PM. You do not need to be home. The drawback: no tax receipt, because these are family businesses rather than 501(c)(3) nonprofits.
Little Free Libraries in Seward and Longfellow
The Little Free Library was invented in this region, and Minneapolis treats them accordingly. There is one on half the corners in Seward and Longfellow, and another every few hundred feet along the paths above Minnehaha Falls. Perfect for a handful of paperbacks. The drawback: never a place for boxes, and never leave a stack on the ground beside one.
Hennepin County Library Branch Sales
Branches accept limited donations of clean, current titles and sell them cheaply to support the branch. The drawback: space. Textbooks, encyclopedias, older editions, and anything in quantity are usually declined, kindly but firmly.
School Drives and Classroom Requests
Minneapolis Public Schools classrooms take children's books and readers, mostly during an active drive. The drawback: outside a drive, a school office is not set up to receive boxes.
Selling Into the Used Book Market
A small stack of desirable titles can be sold to a secondhand shop or listed online. The drawback: worth the effort for ten good books, rarely worth it for two hundred mixed ones.
How Does Free Book Donation Pickup Work in Minneapolis?
Give My Books Network sends a Local Pick-Up Partner, the locally owned family business that does the collecting, to your Minneapolis address at no cost on a service day you choose.
You pack the boxes. The partner does not bring boxes. Set them out by 8 AM in a dry, covered spot, and collection runs from 8 AM to 8 PM. If a partner serves your ZIP code, you can schedule immediately. If none does yet, submit the request anyway and it enters the out-of-area pickup system.
Which Option Fits Which Pile?
Match the option to the volume: a handful of paperbacks fits a Little Free Library, a box or two fits a branch sale, and anything larger belongs in a free doorstep pickup.
- Under ten books — a Little Free Library, a friend, a waiting room.
- One or two boxes — a branch sale or a school drive, if one is running.
- Three boxes to a whole basement — free doorstep pickup from Give My Books Network.
- Ten genuinely valuable titles — a secondhand shop or an online listing.
- Anything mold-damaged or water-swollen — no second life. Keep it out of the donation box.
What Happens to Minneapolis Books After Pickup?
Local Pick-Up Partners sort every pickup offsite: many items are redistributed to schools, libraries, nonprofits, and literacy programs through the Give ME Books program, and some are resold to fund the free service.
Books that cannot be reused may eventually be recycled as a last resort. Nobody claims that every book is donated. Some are resold, and that resale is the reason the pickup costs you nothing at all.
The American Library Association's Book Donation Programs guide is the clearest explanation of why libraries decline so much, and why programs like this one exist to catch what a branch cannot take.
What Not to Do With Old Books in Minneapolis
Do not leave books on a Minneapolis curb, in an unattended pile beside a Little Free Library, or in a damp basement for another humid August.
A wet box is a lost box. Books left outside uncovered in this climate are finished in a single afternoon of April slush. And a book sent to a landfill is a book that could have gone to a classroom instead, which is the whole reason this network exists.
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Donating from outside Minneapolis, MN, or just want the full picture first? Read our guide to where to donate books for a straight comparison of every option nationwide.