The Library

I am so extremely grateful for the public library. We have lived in the same city for eight years and have gone to the library almost every week for all of those eight years. Typically, we check out about 50 books per week. Now, the kids don't always read all of the books, but most of the books are read by at least one of my children. When it was just Adam, then Adam and Lily, we did not check out quite that many books at a time. So, as a very conservative figure, I estimate that we have checked out about 5,000 books from the library in the eight years that we have lived in this town.

The library has an online hold system. Often, I put the maximum number of books on hold (20). Then, I don't even have to find the books. The librarian does it for me. I love it! We can also check out books from many neighboring libraries. They are delivered right to our library.

We have lost two books. There is quite a high fee if you lose a book. So, for those two books we probably spent $50. Also, I frequently have a fine on my card. I wait to pay it until it gets close to $5 because I usually use the self checkout. I have probably paid about $30 in fines in the eight years that I have used this library. So, basically I have paid about one penny in rental fees for each book that I have checked out (of course, there are taxes, but we'd pay these whether or not we'd used the library).

On the other hand, my kids have always done the summer reading program and received great prizes. I'm sure that over the years the prizes have equaled at least $80. So, I guess that our book rental has cost us nothing. What a deal!