The Big Move: Battle Plans!

Hi, bookstore friends!

So many of you have offered to help with our upcoming move. We are extremely appreciative of your help, your encouragement, and your well-wishes on this transition.

If you have a few free hours any time from Sunday afternoon, March 1 to Saturday, March 7, we welcome you and can find you some ways to help! We are more aware than ever that we are your community bookstore and you are our community. Come meet some more fellow book friends, and pack some boxes, put boxes or bags in cars or trucks, take some shelves apart, transfer books and shelves to our new space, help clean, or drive around the corner a bunch of times. We'll have it fairly well-orchestrated (gulp! I hope!), so show up and we'll insert you into a job that you can comfortably do.

Here's the tentative schedule:
Sunday, March 1, we will still be open for business until 4pm, at 25 Main St. This will be the tail-end of our 50% off sale, hoping to sell a few more hardcovers and used books to save us from packing them to move.
At 4pm, we will begin moving the "overstock" boxes from the basement space. These boxes are organized and labeled -- for example, "YA, 'D'", meaning young adult books whose author's last name starts with "D". Our basement has been organized this way for a while, but we've been working extra hard to corral all these books into their proper boxes for the move.
*We'll need somewhere between 3 and 10 people to haul these boxes up the stairs from the basement. None of these boxes is super-heavy, but it is work on your back and knees to bring them up the stairs. Volunteers for this are much needed. Let me know if you can do this.
*We'll also need 4-8 vehicles to transport these boxes. You can park out front, have boxes loaded in your car, and then drive around the corner to the new space where boxes will be unloaded. So, just driving is helpful, too.
*These boxes need to be taken into our new basement storage, so, once again, STAIRS. Bad knees should not help.
*We'll go until dark, probably, and pizza will be provided at the end!

Monday, March 2: starting at 9am, we will take books off the shelves on our walls at 25 Main St. These books will go in boxes that need to be very clearly labeled. We will have a specific order to which shelves will be emptied, because these shelves will be taken down, taken to our new store, and secured to the walls there, but there is a specific map for where each shelf goes. Think of a jigsaw puzzle, or Tetris, with shelves.
*We'll need one or two people with some level of comfort with tools, who will follow directions from the foreman who will be helping us secure the shelves to the walls at 7 East Avenue.
*It would be VERY helpful to have 3-5 people with pick-up trucks, with open beds, for moving the shelves, since they are 8 feet high. We could just walk them over, if need be. As it is, someone may have to ride -- carefully -- in the back of a pick-up, with the shelves we're moving, so they don't crash out of the truck bed.
*We'll need people to pack and label book boxes.
*Snacks & beverages provided

Tuesday, March 3: I'd like this to be the day we move the two display cases that serve as our check-out counter area. We need a couple of pick-up trucks and some strong folks to help lift and move. Also, we have a couple of dollies/skids/hand trucks, but more would be very welcome. If you have one, come on down!!!! THANKS!!!

more specifics to come, as we see what needs to be done each day.

Thanks again to all of you! Cheers!!!