With the deadline for full purchase price refunds on textbook returns fast approaching, many of us will inevitably find ourselves mid-semester in possession of a small library of “required” books whose covers have not even been opened.
Or maybe last semester’s new book – yeah, the one you paid $100 for – was only worth about $5 at buyback time. All is not lost, however. There are still plenty of perfectly good uses for your obsolete texts. Read on for a few ideas.
Decorate your dorm room or apartment. Yes, all your friends will be impressed that your bookshelf is actually filled with books and not souvenir beer bottles and video recordings of “The Real World” season whatever.
If “studious” isn’t your style, you can still use the pages for an interesting wall covering. Just think how amazing those U.S. history illustrations would look in your bathroom.
Reach higher than you’ve ever reached. That’s right, stack those books up, secure them with a few layers of duct tape and step right up. You’ll be amazed what you’ll find in your highest cabinets now that you can actually see inside.
Watch out for those Norton anthologies, though. They’ll definitely add at least 5 inches, but their odd shape may prove a bit unsteady.
Start your own home gym. Do you know how heavy the science textbooks are? I see some pretty favorable sculpt-and-tone potential here. As an added bonus, the heaviest books are so bulky that you’ll be forced to use a whole new set of muscles just to keep from dropping them.
Also try taping a book or two to your forehead to intensify the crunches in your abdominal workout.
Make your own refrigerator poetry. Apart from the pictures, which should be prominently decorating your walls by now, what else fills a textbook but words? You may already have every magnetic poetry collection in existence, but I bet you don’t have the “Introduction to Unix,” “Psychology of Learning” or “Principles of Marketing” editions.
Don’t try to contain your excitement any longer. Go now, get the scissors and Scotch tape and head for the fridge.
Press your wrinkled clothes. Remember carefully pressing leaves and flowers between the pages of a book for your fifth grade science project? They came out so delightfully flat, just like the ideal ready-to-wear item of clothing.
Socks and underwear should be a cinch because of their smaller sizes. For bigger items, though, trying a combination of pressing between pages and flattening with whole books. You could sandwich each sleeve of a T-shirt, for example, inside a heavy book. Placing a few more books on top of the body of the shirt should do the rest.
See? There are lots of uses for your old textbooks. Now you finally have a reason not to drive all the way out to a used bookstore to exchange your books for cash.
After all, who wants money when you can have such versatile stuff?