During my huge nesting purge, I sat and was looking at my bookcases. There were lots of old textbooks from college (we graduated in 2003), my MBA (2007), and WickedHubby’s Masters (2010) that were probably not ever going to be looked at again. They were hogging up my precious shelf space, making more weight for moving, and not benefiting our family in any specific way. I wasn’t sure what to do about it, so I ventured to Facebook and asked what my friends suggested. It came to my attention that even libraries won’t take old textbooks. Why would they?! They would just be taking up THEIR space and wasting the space of another book. I thought of Goodwill and the shelters (for those who are less fortunate but want to study advanced business and operational research), and the unfortunate reality that many of these are going to end up in a recycling pile at the dump. On one of my calls with a good friend from Charleston, I mentioned my problem. She said, “you should try Amazon’s Textbook Trade-In program. I did, and I got some money for books from way back…” So we did. GUESS WHAT?! Many of my books were so outdated that dinosaurs apparently would pass them over for more current information. Others, 4 books, earned me a whopping $49.08. Hey. I get the space on my shelf and $50? Thank you. Yes, please! Hubby got into it, and grabbed his textbooks to test out the system and won us $356 for 8 of his and 2 more of my books. In all, WickedA’s solution gained our family over $400! Payment will come to our family in a credit at Amazon.com, but we figure just about everything is available for sale through Amazon, so that’s fine with us. Christmas presents, baby stuff, whatever we want to buy is a little more affordable now. The bonus is that our shelves are less cluttered with books we will never read. GREAT suggestion.

Additional note: If you are a current student, there are many sites (including Barnes and Nobles) that allow you to rent textbooks or use digital copies for huge discounts. No clutter, more money, and better for the environment? GO FOR IT!