Try Before You Buy

I am a recovering pack rat. I admit it. I used to keep and buy everything in which I had a passing fancy. I had shoes, clothes, and craft items.

And books? Any good idea I had, I would find a book to go with it. I could spend hours at a bookstore.

Between the shoes, clothes, craft items, and especially books, I eventually ran out of space for all my stuff. After moving to a new home with all my junk, I decided to clean out my life.

Now, I still have that craving to buy, buy, buy. Especially books. But I have instead found a way to try my books before I buy them. It's called a library.

They are the neatest places. You can actually borrow books for weeks at a time for free! And if they don't have a book I'm interested in, they will order it from another library (apparently they are everywhere). I recently borrowed a book that came from a library on the other side of the country!

Now when I get that old urge to go to the bookstore for an entire afternoon, I instead get on my library's website, search their online catalog, and zip over for whatever I want. This way I can read the book and decide if it's really worth space on my shelf. Many times the book isn't worth more than one read.

If they only had shoe, clothes and craft libraries I'd really be on my way to a purely pack rat free nontoxic life.