How to Prepare Books for Donation in St. Louis

How Do You Prepare Books for Donation Pickup in St. Louis?

Pack the books into sturdy containers, keep each one light enough to carry alone, and set them out by 8 AM in a dry, covered spot on your service day.

1. Bring the books up from the basement a few days early, a box at a time.
2. Pack into moving boxes, banker's boxes, plastic totes, or doubled paper grocery bags.
3. Keep each container light enough for one person to lift alone. Split the heavy ones.
4. Do not sort. Hardcovers, paperbacks, DVDs, CDs, and vinyl records all travel together.
5. Set everything out by 8 AM on the covered front porch.
6. Lay a lid or a plastic bag over the top if rain is anywhere in the forecast.
7. Leave it and go about your day. You do not need to be home.

What Should You Pack Books In?

Sturdy moving boxes, banker's boxes, plastic totes, and doubled paper grocery bags all work well. Your Local Pick-Up Partner does not bring boxes, so the containers have to be yours.

What does not work: a single thin grocery bag, which will fail on the porch step. An open laundry basket you want back. A box that has been sitting in a damp basement so long the bottom has gone soft. Rebox that one before it lets go on the stairs.

How Heavy Should a Box of Books Be?

A box of books should be light enough for one person to lift and carry alone, which in practice means a small or medium box rather than a large one.

Books are denser than almost anything else in a house. A big moving box packed full of hardcovers is not a box, it is an injury with handles. Half-fill the large ones, or use small ones from the start.

Carrying Boxes Up From a St. Louis Basement

Carry the books up yourself, over several days if needed, because a Local Pick-Up Partner collects what is already packed and waiting outside and does not carry boxes up from the basement.

This is the part St. Louis donors underestimate. A flat off Kingshighway with fourteen steps up to the porch and thirty years of books below it is a real project, not an afternoon. Work in stages. Use a hand truck. Ask the neighbor with the good back. Stage the boxes in the front room, then move them to the porch the night before or first thing on the morning of.

Where to Set the Boxes Out in St. Louis

The covered front porch is the best set-out spot in St. Louis. If the porch is open to the weather, the garage or parking pad off the alley is the reliable backup.

Keep the boxes visible, out of the walking path, and off the wet concrete. Dry matters more than tidy. The American Library Association's book donation guidelines make the same point from the receiving end: a book that arrives wet arrives finished.

What Not to Do Before a St. Louis Pickup

Do not sort, do not shrink-wrap, do not tape every box shut, and do not leave bare cardboard sitting uncovered on an open step in July.

A summer downpour here does not knock politely. Ten minutes is enough to turn a good box into a soft one, and an ice-storm weekend does the same job more slowly. Cover the cardboard. Beyond that, Give My Books Network asks for nothing else. Schedule, set out, done.

After collection, your Local Pick-Up Partner sorts everything offsite. Many items are redistributed through the Give ME Books program to schools, libraries, literacy programs, and senior centers, and some are resold, which is what keeps Give My Books Network pickups free for the donor. Items with nothing left in them may eventually be recycled, as a last resort.

Or browse all St. Louis donation services including DVD & Media Donation Pickup, Book Donation Pickup, Doorstep Book Pickup.