We have been blown away with donations these last few days, I think that people decided that it was never going to stop showering - raining and they might as well get their stuff out. My favorite label on the boxes this week was -garage shit. Did peek in to make sure it wasn't accurately labeled. Just a short time ago, all the boxes were off the floor and then wham! we are filled and heading to alternate storage. I can tell you that there will be masses of LPs at the next sale. Lots of classic and 40s-50s also. a couple boxes of gaming magazines showed up also. I told the donor that they would go to good homes.
In addition, boxes of great childens, history, and art have shown up in our room. We are pricing and boxing as fast as we can because we know that Shute Park Library will be sending over 10,000 items in the next few months. Wow!
We do like to take off the mylar covers, and also make sure the books are not falling apart - we will glue them back together, if we can. Also, a nice clean on the kids books is also called for.
Linda took home this weekend our new anti-smell machine, I'm anxious to hear and smell how it performed.

Sci-Fi was the winner, so far, this week. We just love it when boxes of sci-fi/fantasy come in. CDs are filling up our CD holders. We do need jewel cases, if anyone has any extra. We try to recase all the ex-library and on-line ones if they need it and since the library is getting most of their cds pre-packaged for library use, we no longer snag their new cases when they switch out to library cases.
I just ordered an Odor Free Villa 1000 to deal with the donated musty books and smoky ones too. We have our fingers crossed that this will work - figure one great book on-line will help pay for the machine. We should be taking it out for a spin next week.
Our box numbers have increased - 18 is the new total.
Permenant sale shelves are chock-full of great titles.

If you are a reader of Chinese, today was your day. A full box -35 lbs was taped shut.
We were also trying to get our backlog of books to go online whittled down. As usual something else came up.
Linda, our project oriented volunteer, decided today was a good day for upstairs organizing. It is amazing how much she can get done. For muscle, she brought in Joe, another one of the faithful.
A cart load of books came in late this afternoon and unfortunately, there was a musty odor coming from the box. We live in Oregon - don't leave boxes of books in your garage or basement. I decided to check to see if any were unodoriferous ones. A nice lot of art and childrens were in the boxes. I was innocently sniffing away - nose deep in the book when I realized the page I was on was of a reclining nude and it looked like I was sniffing her naughty parts. Annie was standing behind me - assistant sniffer. We both broke up laughing.
The sale shelves were stocked with some interesting books today - come check it out.

The permanent sale shelves were switched from Hard Back Fiction and Audiobooks on the last day of the sale back to normal. I started switching them back but was "let go" or made redundant, if you like the English term. A little thing like putting all the mass market paperback shelves in crooked.
Kathy marked the shelves so we won't have that problem again. She is also the queen of the alphabet and I consider myself to be alphabetically challenged. We have our fiction in order and by category- regular, mystery, sci-fi and romance.
Children and Non-fiction are pretty much by size. We added a shelf of magazines since they seen to be selling well.
We have good volunteers restocking regularly. Melinda is Monday and Wednesday and Betty is Friday.
On-line is doing well but we have almost caught up with donations and the weeded books. librarians weed their collections for different reasons, such as, not circulating, condition, newer information available, so if you are in the area and want to clean out your shelves come see us. Go to the Welcome Desk and they will call us.We have a nice hand truck and flatbed cart to help bring them in.
The dust has hardly settled but we already have about 10 boxes going to storage. The sale usually has between 400- 600 boxes - in categories and graded.

The police have come and taken away the stroller. I called Costco because there was a receipt in the stroller and they said they would call the member's number a tell them about the stroller.
In other news, we went 25% over last years total. How is that for cool. Thanks to the many great volunteer who worked their fingers to the bone. Actually, we all were talking about breaking nails.
Melinda was the one in the main room directing customers and trying to find books and sell them more. Annie was bringing in all the carts she was pricing, Kathy was carting too. Linda was also keeping up with our amazon on-line sales. And a host of others, Great job all.
Kathy, Annie disposed of our least favorite cash register today. Sorry you missed the ceremony.
the donations have continued through the sale and we received a lot of children's books. We will be boxing the extras - we do have a small permanent sale at the library.

Stroller left behind at Book Sale

A stroller was left behind in Stroller Parking on Thursday or Friday. If you know someone who shopped at our sale who is having trouble remembering where they left their stroller, please give them a hint. It's at the library. Tell them to go to the Welcome Desk and describe it for the nice person who works there. He or she will be happy to reunite the owner with the stroller.

We made it, we are over last year. There are still bunches of books left but we have enough room to bring down our misc. stuff today: Floor rocker chair, Herman Miller Round Table, and framed posters etc. -- maybe even the court reporter machine.
We are pricing as fast as we can to fill the gaps but the buyers are in front of us.

Crazy days! We are heading toward a record. I want to thank several people - the woman who said she came to the sale because of the sign on the overpass. I had to tape it to a guardrail and the truck driver waiting on the off ramp thought it was hilarious, especially when I dropped the scissors. I debated whether to let it go or bend over the rail and show my big butt. Also, thank you to the customer who brought my library book back - we packed it in her bag. It is a great book - the new Sherlock Homes - Mary Russell book. The first in the series is The Beekeepers Apprentice. The volunteers have been great and the Hands on Portland Walk- Ins have been very helpful with our rearranging projects.
Annie, a real pricing worker bee, and I stayed late to get another 5 carts priced and out to fill our gaps.
Today could be the last sale record breaking day. If you are in the area, come help put us over.

It was a record breaking Fri- Sat. Spent this morning checking on our signs, changing their location. It was great meeting our customers yesterday - from Alaska to Ashland, Oregon. There was even a mother -daughter who come down from Kelso, Washington every sale. They are on our postcard mailing list. They went to the car with bags at least three times.
Today, and yesterday, our Friends President came in with boxes of books. She was going to stop packing them up this afternoon but her husband insisted she go through all her boxes of books. Good news for our sale, and since she bought a lot of them at our previous sales - they were already priced. She is a science fiction, fantasy, romance reader.

Same Murder Room wall after 1st day of sale

Here's the same wall in the aftermath of Friday's record-breaking sales. I came in early and restocked from about half a dozen boxes that we hadn't opened yet because there just wasn't any room for them. I also moved overstock down so that all but the top two shelves were full again.

We do restock every day of the sale. We put more items out every morning before the sale opens and whenever we have time throughout the day. Here's a sampling of the books I stocked this afternoon: Worst Case, one of James Patterson's new releases, Kitchen Confidential (Biography), The Book of Useless Information (Reference) and several of Ann Rule's books (True Crime). I put out Children's, general fiction, science fiction (one of our large donations today had a lot of sci-fi/fantasy), romance, mystery and non-fiction in every category.

We received three rather large donations today and will be adding those items to the sale as soon as we can get them priced. We take donations all year long. If you have books to donate, just drop them off at the Welcome Desk. The nice person behind the desk will be happy to give you a donation receipt for your taxes.