Where can I donate books during a military PCS at Kirtland AFB?

Military PCS (Permanent Change of Station) at Kirtland AFB is one of NMLP's most common donor scenarios. Active-duty enlisted families especially feel the HHG weight allowance pressure — books are heavy and a bookshelf can blow several hundred pounds of allowance.

NMLP handles military PCS book pickups:

• On-base or off-base — NMLP picks up at base housing, off-base rentals across the metro, and storage units.
• No rank questions, no DoD ID checks — NMLP doesn't need anything from you beyond an address and time window.
• Tell me your shipping date and I'll do my best to meet it — call and explain the timeline; NMLP works around PCS pressure regularly and will fit you in as soon as the schedule allows.
• Spouse-coordinated pickups while service member is TDY — common; NMLP works directly with the at-home spouse.
• Storage unit cleanouts — when sponsorship comes back from a deployment and the household is downsizing the books that didn't get unpacked.

Drop-off alternative: 5445 Edith Blvd NE, Unit A — about 10 minutes from Kirtland AFB main gate, accessible 24/7 via outdoor donation box.

Free, no fee, no donation receipt expected. Call or text 702-496-4214.

The weight-allowance arithmetic

The HHG numbers make the decision before sentiment does. A typical E-5 with dependents gets around 11,000 pounds; an O-4 about 14,000. Books run roughly 30 pounds per standard moving box, so a household of 1,000 to 2,000 books is 30 to 60 boxes — 900 to 1,800 pounds, or 10 to 15 percent of the entire allowance, and overage comes out of your own pocket. The sort that works: the books you will actually re-read and the inscribed ones go on the truck; everything else comes to me. PCS season at Kirtland peaks in June and July, so summer orders are best called in April or May. For the final-week crunch, porch pickup works — leave the boxes, text the address, and I collect after you have shipped out.

Other New Mexico installations

The same service covers all five major NM installations. Kirtland is fifteen minutes from the warehouse, with pickups across base housing and the SE Heights, Four Hills, and Mesa del Sol neighborhoods. Sandia rotations look identical from my side, except the libraries skew technical — graduate texts and conference proceedings that often carry real resale value. White Sands and Holloman run as combined southern routes through Las Cruces and Alamogordo, and Cannon runs an eastern route through Clovis and Portales — for those three, two to three weeks of notice lets me build the trip. Career-military libraries built across duty stations — military history, strategy, leadership — are a category I know well. The fast-move playbook covers every timeline.