She called on a weekday afternoon. The closing on her old house was eight days out. Her new place was smaller and didn’t have shelf space for half the books, and the moving estimate had quoted her something painful for the boxes she’d already labeled and the boxes she still needed to pack. She’d been in the house for a long time and she’d read most of what was on the shelves and she had loved them and she didn’t want to keep them. That part she was clear about.
What she couldn’t do was put them in the dumpster the realtor had ordered for the rest of the cleanup.
“I just want them to go to someone who will read them.”
That was the sentence she said three different ways before she said it cleanly. The first time she said something about how it didn’t feel right. The second time she said something about her back hurting and the boxes being heavy. The third time she got to the actual thing: she wanted the books to be read. She wanted them in someone’s hands — a kid’s hands, a stranger’s hands, anybody’s hands — rather than in a landfill.
I told her that’s exactly what I do, and she got quiet for a second, and then she said “oh thank god,” and I scheduled the pickup for the next morning.
Last verified May 2026 · Original research by Josh Eldred
Two real fears, named
If you’re reading this, you’re probably in some version of her week. The fears she had are the ones I hear most often from movers in Albuquerque, and they’re both real.
The first is the landfill. Most American books that get donated to general thrift channels don’t end up on a shelf for the next reader — they end up pulped or in a regional landfill within weeks of arriving, because shelf space is too valuable for slow-turning stock. Most thrifts handle that gracefully and quietly and most donors have no idea it’s happening. So you have a worry that turns out to be reasonable: the act of donating doesn’t guarantee the books survive.
The second is the lift. Books are about a pound apiece. A bookshelf full of hardcovers is two to three hundred pounds of awkward asymmetric weight. Loading that in your car requires either a body that can do it or a body that’s about to be very sore for a few days. If your back is already telling you about the eight cabinets you packed yesterday, the books are not getting in the car this weekend.
That combination — landfill anxiety plus physical pain — is the precise reason most movers I work with end up calling. It’s not laziness or guilt. It’s “I want this to go well and I’m running out of body to make it go well.”
What “a reader” actually means here
When she said she wanted the books to go to someone who would read them, I knew what she meant, and I want to tell you what that actually looks like on my end.
I drive the books back to the warehouse on Edith. They go on a workbench. I sort them by hand, one at a time. The reading happens in different places depending on the book.
Children’s books in good shape go to APS Title I elementary schools, where teachers stock classroom libraries with books they couldn’t otherwise afford to buy. They also go to the UNM Children’s Hospital reading program, where pediatric patients pick out a book to take home from a cart that comes through the floor. Both of those are real partnerships, not theoretical ones — the books that came in last week are on shelves this month.
Adult fiction and general-interest titles in good shape get split. Some go to Little Free Libraries throughout the metro — there are dozens of them between the North Valley and the East Mountains, and I rotate stock through them so people walking past find something different each week. Some go on Amazon and eBay where used-book buyers across the country find them; the resale margin is what funds the truck and the warehouse and the free pickups.
Specialty material — a signed first edition, a scholarly volume, a research-grade reference work — goes to a specialist who will price it for a collector or an institution that’s actively looking for it. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, that book finds someone whose week is made by it.
Books that aren’t salvageable — the moldy ones, the cracked-spine paperbacks from 1972, the encyclopedias from 1968 — go to a regional pulp recycler that turns them back into paper. The cellulose stays in circulation. Nothing recyclable goes to landfill if I can help it.
I’m saying all this in detail because she asked, and because if you’re her, you’re probably going to ask too. The books go to readers, when there are readers for them. The ones too damaged for any reader become paper again. None of them go to landfill on my watch.
About your back
You don’t lift the boxes. I lift the boxes.
I bring a hand truck. I have a van. I’ve been doing this long enough that the loading is a thirty-minute job for a small library and an hour or two for a big one. You can sit on the porch. You can supervise. You can make a phone call you’ve been meaning to make. Whatever you want to do is fine; the only physical effort I need from you is opening the door.
If your books are already in boxes, that’s helpful but not required. If they’re on the shelves, that’s also fine — I empty bookshelves into bins regularly. If they’re in garbage bags, contractor bags, plastic crates, an upended laundry basket, that’s also fine. The packaging doesn’t affect anything once they’re in the warehouse.
The point is that the lifting stops being your problem the moment I get there.
What I don’t do, again
I don’t buy books at retail prices — this is donation pickup, not a purchase. I don’t pressure you to negotiate value. I’m not a 501(c)(3) charity, so the donation isn’t tax-deductible — if that matters to your situation, Goodwill or the Friends of the Albuquerque Public Library are both registered nonprofits that can issue a receipt.
I don’t take furniture, appliances, paint, or hazardous waste. Just the books, magazines, encyclopedias, photo albums, sheet music, journals, VHS, DVDs, CDs, audio cassettes, and vinyl. The paper-and-plastic record of a reading life.
If you’re moving and reading this
Text photos to 702-496-4214. Photos of the boxes, the shelves, whatever’s easiest. Include your address and a rough timeline (closing date, moving day, dumpster delivery, whatever’s the constraint). I’ll text back the with a pickup window.
If you’d rather skip the interaction entirely, the warehouse at 5445 Edith Blvd NE, Unit A has a 24/7 outdoor drop box. Park, drop, leave. No conversation required. Some donors find that easier when their week has already been a lot.
She’s settled in by now
I came back the next morning with the van. I loaded the boxes in about twenty-five minutes. She sat at her kitchen table with a coffee and watched the van fill up. When I closed the back doors and signed her receipt — I bring receipts even though they aren’t tax-deductible, because some donors want them anyway — she said again, quieter, “thank you.”
The books went where they were going to go. A box of children’s books got dropped at an APS elementary school the same afternoon. Some adult fiction is on the shelf at the warehouse waiting for the next round to Little Free Libraries. Maybe ten of the books were specialty enough to go on Amazon. The damaged few went to the paper recycler.
None of them went to a landfill. Her back didn’t get any worse. The dumpster at the curb is for the actual trash and not for the books she loved.
If today is your version of that week, the number is 702-496-4214. I can probably do it tomorrow.
— Josh Eldred, New Mexico Literacy Project. North Valley, Albuquerque.