use the library instead of buying books

love bookstores. spend way too much money on books. looking to use the library more often and only buy books i know i want to own and plan to use/read often.

even if I’m a lazy one that does most of her book browsing online and just picks up the holds. Depending on my time constraints (and how many items I’m already picking up from a hold) I sometimes manage to even browse for a few more items once I’m there.

and I’ve managed not to buy any books. I have started going to the library about once a week. And I’ve borrowed books from friends, coworkers, random strangers off the street (OK not that last one, least not yet). I’m still going to keep this as a goal a while longer as I still need to get more comfortable actually browsing at the library.

I’m starting to get the hang of the whole library thing. I especially like how you can lookup a book, put it on hold and then pick up all your holds at your convienence. I’ve been to the library about four times since starting this challenge, so it’s starting to become a habit. Maybe I’ll even expand from books to movies in the next month and cancel my Netflix account.

OK, this will likely be difficult for me. I like fresh, new books. I like owning my books so I can reread them whenever I want. I prefer to hang out at bookstores over libraries. However, during a recent convo with my cousin I found myself agreeing not to buy any new books for the next three months as part of an anti-consumerism challenge. Since I typically wander into a bookstore every few weeks and wonder out with at least one book (usually two or three) sticking to this challenge will at the very least save me some money.

It’s so much cheaper to borrow books than to buy them! When you buy a book and you’ve finished reading it, all it does is sit on the shelf anyway, so it may as well sit on the shelf in the library until you come back and borrow it! The one thing I don’t like is having to order a book and wait weeks for it to come in. Especially when it’s a new and exciting book fresh on the market. So very occasionally I do buy a book; also books that I really value, like the Poisonwood Bible. But a year or so ago I sold about 90% of my books on Amazon – raked in lots of money and felt so much more clutter-free!

I still buy around 10 books a year but borrow a lot more from my local libraries. This method definitely saves money.

a metric ton of money lately.

that my library doesn’t carry.
There are many teaching specific books that I want to read but my library system (which has 8 libraries) doesn’t own.
For most any fiction book or standard non fiction (like knitting books) I’ve been using the library.
I can usually find the strange ones on half.com, and then I don’t feel bad selling them again when I’m done reading.

So worth doing as it is saving me lots of money since I am a book addict… plus it saves me from having to make another stack of books on the floor since I don’t have any more room on my bookshelves.