Piper Nuelle

Hello my lovelies and welcome back to my blog. I was out shopping with my nanna the other day when we decided to have a nosey round the local charity shops and thrift stores. Now, I admit I love a good bargain and I grew up with my nanna looking around the second hand shops, charity shops, boot sales, thrift stores etc and a part of me will always love the experience of finding something that was once someone else’s trash that could become my treasure, especially when it comes to books!!! I love to adopt new / old books that just want to be loved again!!!

A lot of people will buy a book, read it once and donate it off to the charity shop or local second hand book stall in some supermarkets. Not everyone is like us book worms that buy a book and adopt and plan to keep forever so we can one day put it in our home library (If we ever get one lol) but quite a lot of people now a days have smaller homes, or they like their homes to be non-cluttered and minimalistic. So donation is key to be able to buy and bring in new books to read. And what that means for us readers and book lovers out there is that there is always a book bargain to be found!

Sometimes you may go in the charity shop and find nothing at all that peeks your interest and makes you want to adopt a book. But on other occasions you may find a few that desperately need taking home, shown some TLC and read till the cows come home.

I thoroughly enjoy looking at the books in second hand stores but I know in the past buying books second hand has had some negativity and I do have some hints and tips to help you find good books to read and hopefully not get anything too damaged or too dirty;

• Check the spines and flip through all the pages to see the inner creases where the book is bound – I remember a couple of years ago there was an outbreak of panic of bed bugs being picked up in second hand books. And yes, it is something you must watch out for because unfortunately you cannot know what the previous persons house is or was like. Most charity shops and second hand stores will check all stock and where possible clean, but sometimes things get missed. So I always check the spines, check the pages and the inner creases to check for bugs. If anything looks amiss to me, I don’t buy it or adopt it.
• Take it home and use a Dettol disinfectant spray on the book – The one I use is the Dettol in a spray can that gives a light mist and doesn’t drench the book. Then I leave it to air dry. This makes me feel like the book has at least been disinfected and ready for my hands to touch and read and there’s no contamination or remnants of others peoples hands or lifestyles.
• Check pages for missing pages and scribbles – There’s nothing worse than being so happy about a book, but you get it home to see some kid has ripped out pages and scribbled all over the inside rendering it unreadable or the previous owner has written a shopping list inside the front page. Before I buy I always check inside and flip through to make sure I can see any torn out pages or drawn on ones. Usually the second hand shops are good at checking but some may be missed at times.
• Smells – Some older books unfortunately may end up with certain smells or aromas from sitting in other people’s homes or just from the paper being old and smelling old. To be honest there is not too much I have found you can do although other people might have found some tricks but what I have done in the past is – leave the new book in my study for a while to absorb my home smell, I spray it with the Dettol disinfectant, and I have sometimes wiped scented tumble dryer sheets over the books and pages lightly to try and neutralise smells. But you do need to be careful because some ink in books may smudge, degrade or the pages may become greasy or stained due to the chemicals in the tumble dryer sheets. But if the smell really puts you off then the tumble dryer sheets are worth it because they usually smell great.

One thing to remember is not everyone is as hygienically clean as you, me or other people and it is a risk you take when buying anything second hand. But as long as you disinfect and check the books before and after you adopt them then they should be safe and hygienic for you to read and love.

Let me know do you ever buy any books second hand? Why or why not? I’d love to know!!! And one thing to remember is recycling helps save the planet, so every book re-homed and re-loved is a book not in landfill!!!

Xo Piper Xo