Just Half An Hour

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I previously mentioned in a post that I traded in my Barnes & Noble membership for library cards to my public library and I did so for multiple reasons, the main one being for financial reasons.

There are a number of other reasons I now prefer using the public library as my go-to spot when looking for what to read next. Not only will they borrow books you want from other libraries if they don’t have them in stock (aka “interlibrary borrowing”), they will also actually purchase books that you want (for the most part anyway), if it meets the criteria for addition to their catalog!

But it’s not all sunshine and butterflies…

The Dirty Little Secret About Library Books

Oh my goodness… If you’re a germaphobe, then stop reading this post right now.

I don’t know what drove me one day to take a Clorox wipe and clean the shiny plastic jacket of the books I had borrowed that day from the library but I did… And I was shocked!

The wipe I was using turned very dark black… I had to use a second one.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my local libraries, but that was absolutely disgusting. However, I guess it makes sense…

Those books pass through many hands, get mistreated sometimes, and travel to places with the people who borrow them… Some of those places include local and international destinations that I wish I could go to for free… Just like the library books.

And some of those places include less desirable destinations, such as certain rooms in peoples’ homes that I would rather not picture them venturing into… Like the bathroom…

I’m not trying to be an alarmist and I’m not making this up… I even recently saw a news story about an epidemic of bed bugs in library books… No joke! But that’s not going to turn me off this gem of a community resource…

No… So now I leave nothing to chance, health, or hygiene.

As soon I bring home any newly-borrowed books from the library, they get a good brisk Lysol or Clorox wipe-down before they even touch any surface in the house.

My Recommendation

Please continue to support your local library… But stop by a local grocery store or Target or Walmart and pick up a container of Clorox or Lysol wipes and just get in the habit of cleaning the plastic covers of these books when you borrow them…

…That is of course, only if the thought of what’s hiding on them freaks you out as it does me.

Note: no library books have been harmed in the process of sanitizing them.

In Other News…

I went to Ikea today in an attempt to scope out furniture options for my home office per yesterday’s update… It took less than ten minutes inside the store for me to get a headache from the overwhelm that the Ikea experience is and the whole mission had to be aborted.