What NOT to Put in a Little Free Library
By Megan Tady
Last Mother’s Day, my dream came true. (No, Beyoncé didn’t invite me to be a back-up dancer on her next tour, but probably because my phone number has changed since she asked for it.) It was my other dream: to have a Little Free Library in my front yard.
Kudos to my husband and kids for a great gift, although I think they came to regret it when I very quickly started stalking the library. Not stocking, like, with great reads, but stalking to see who was taking books and who was leaving books, endlessly checking and re-checking the inventory. I’d tumble through the kitchen door and excitedly announce to my family, “There’s a Louise Penny!” To which my four-year-old would reply, “A penny? Yay, we’re rich!”
It’s a good thing I’ve been paying such close—verging on obsessive—attention, because I’ve discovered that people drop off all sorts of things in a Little Free Library. Think it’s just a bunch of paperbacks? Oh no, my friend. Folks are not just passing on the latest Elin Hilderbrand or a dog-eared copy of Tuesdays With Morrie. Little libraries are a receptacle for the odd, the old, and the out-of-place
To that end, here’s what not to put in my Little Free Library:
Tomes
Books so massive and heavy that nothing else can fit
Your old textbooks that you’ve been meaning to offload for years
A Foreman Grill cookbook with recipes you’ve starred: Loved the lamb chops!
Irrelevant child-rearing handbooks in which the entire book could be summed up in bullet points
Great Courses boxed sets about the history of ancient Egypt
Diet books from any decade
The huge stack of books that no one’s taking from your Little Free Library
Self-Promotion
A Little Free Library is not a community board, so please don’t leave:
Your business card
A flyer for your tag sale, even if you write in all caps: HUGE! (unless you’re selling a decent patio table, because I’m looking for one)
A brochure for a walking tour that you’re leading
Your headshot and/or Glamour Shots from the mall when you were ten years old and that was all you wanted for Christmas, but then you got them back and you looked like a mean realtor who smacked people’s hands away from the cookie platter if they came back for seconds*
A locked diary with just enough give so that I can read a few pages of your poetry, but still locked tight enough that no one else can use it
Food
This is not a teacher’s lounge, where you can dump the stale muffins that no one’s eating at home
Halloween candy rejected by trick-or-treaters (stop buying Necco wafers, for the love of God!)
Soy sauce packets/extra chopsticks because your soy sauce packet/extra chopstick drawer is full
GU Energy gel (actually, that came in handy once when I was locked out)
Extra zucchini from your garden
Plant starts—I love free plant starts in your yard, but please don’t leave a tray of baby lettuces on the ground underneath my library
Things That Are Objectively Unhelpful
Take your useless items elsewhere
Calendar magnets…from last year
A Lego Lions Knights Castle instruction booklet, two pages torn out
College viewbooks…from eight years ago
A handwritten IOU for a foot rub (I’ll track you down to redeem this!)
Already scratched-off scratch-off tickets
Marginalia
I get it: sometimes things just need to be tucked on a shelf, slid in between a stack of books or hidden away, because throwing them out feels wasteful, or you might want them some day. Take it elsewhere, pal.
Rocks you found on your walk that you like but not enough to bring home
Empty dog-poo bags
The dozens of stickers you got from Trader Joes when your kid just asked for one
Val-Pack coupons
USB chargers for a device that you no longer own/have forgotten what it goes to
Now that we’ve established these ground rules, happy book lending! In all seriousness, I absolutely cherish my neighborhood library, and I get giddy when people actively use it, leaving books they love, and discovering new voices. I tend to the Little Free Library like I would a plant start (had I taken one from your yard), and I’ve been delighted to watch the collection grow and change over the last year.
Please excuse me while I haul all of these old textbooks to the Little Free Library down the street.
*If this sounds personal, it is.
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Megan Tady is a writer and editor running the company Word-Lift. Her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post and Ms. Magazine, among others. Super Bloom, her debut novel, publishes May 2, 2023 with Zibby Books. She's working on her second novel, Champions for Breakfast, publishing in 2024, also with Zibby Books. Megan lives in Western Massachusetts with her family.
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