Talk about planning ahead…

I bought 3rd grade, middle-school and high school textbooks today.

That bookstore I’ve mentioned *loving* was having a half-off sale today for the last day of spring break and I was there for over two hours, combing the shelves (and, yes, I broke my resolution and bought some things utterly for my own reading).

Several of these were individual illustrated stories or collections of folktales, and so could be argued as for the children/education as well as for me, but a good handful were truly “unnecessary but interesting” books that I got simply because I was curious.

You might say I’m willing to buy outrageously far ahead because of the way I do the math.

I (think I) learned this formula from my mom:

Is the cost of storing the item greater than the cost of buying the item when you actually need it?

Since we don’t buy storage outside our home the question of cost is mostly about space.

With the extra set of bunk beds that have been taking up space in our garage for, hmmm, 5+ years, the calculation has always been right on the edge, but with books there is no question.

We have only one level in our smallish house, but we have a crawl-space under the whole of it.

This means that we literally have no need to get rid of anything we think we might use again— as long as it can go through the hole in the floor (sounds scary, doesn’t it?).

So the question really comes down to organization: whether we can create a system that allows us both to accrue what is needed, remember that we have it, and get it out at the right times.

As I’ve always bought my children’s clothes this way we are already aware both of the benefits and the dangers/drawbacks of this method.

But even with all the challenges it inherently holds, the cost/benefits ratio can hardly be quibbled over while we have any space.

For the nearly 3-foot stack of textbooks and reference materials that will be going under the house (including a *nice* Complete Works of Shakespeare that made up half the cost) I spent $27.50

God’s provision is so good.

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