What's It Like To Throw Away Books?

Since I'm moving, I'm up against the wall on the quantity of stuff I have. And something had to give. Meaning I needed to pare down drastically and quickly.

Over several days I was cleaning my basement and some of the other rooms of stuff. Most of my excess stuff, stuff that's not kept in more accessible rooms, was in the basement. My basement was like a thicket or swamp of stuff. Crazy thick.

In all that time I managed to sort out what became a little over ¾ a ton, over 1500 pounds of books, plus such an assortment of other things that it was literally over 3000 pounds besides the books. The over 3000 pounds worth of stuff I took to a recycling center nearby.

Today it was time to get rid of the books. I was trying to sell them in the want ads but no one called. I took a couple carloads to a thrift store, a carload and three more boxes to a book sale coming up, then they were overwhelmed, so instead of messing around with the last remaining thrift store, I took them to the recycling center. The grand total poundage on the books that ended up at the center was 1060 pounds. I'm thinking the three carloads was at least 500 pounds, probably more like a thousand. Meaning it'd be literally a ton of books I got rid of today!

That's tough. I'm the kind of guy, had I seen the ad in the paper, I would've been right there to buy them ... at least that'd be the temptation. Now, though, I'm starting to live in a different way, where I think it'd be best for me to pare down and keep paring until I have barely anything. If at all possible.

So what's it like to throw books away? And to have them be shoved up among the other garbage, very unceremoniously, and to eventually go up the chute and be spat off into the recycled paper bin? It feels terrible. But I was running out of options, and I needed something now.