I set up a Little Free Library

A practical lesson on “doing something” in our new weird America.

One day after the 2024 election, I was a sobbing mess between camera-off Zoom calls. Two days after the election, my husband gently suggested we get pizza at our local Detroit-style spot. I agreed, because it’s hard to say no to deep dish, but also because there was a Little Free Library at a county building nearby. I wanted to do something–anything–other than angrily post and doom scroll, and I figured donating books would be something good to do.

The 15-minute walk to drop a couple of books, combined with the 10-minute drive to our nearest city library, gave me an idea. We have a park in front of our house, which is maintained by our HOA. I couldn’t singlehandedly stop states and the federal government from banning books in schools and public libraries, but I could make books more accessible to people right here in my neighborhood. My mom’s side of the family always prefaces talks about estate planning and/or the worst case scenario with “if I get hit by a bus tomorrow” – here was a way I could leave an actual mark on the world if I got wiped out by the 44 to Kearny Mesa the next day.

I was going to convince our HOA to let me put a Little Free Library in the park outside our house.

The finished product. Isn’t it beautiful?

The idea gave me a small spark of hope and a sense of “doing something.” It didn’t cure my ongoing grief and existential dread over the complete obvious takeover of our government by corrupt billionaires only interested in enriching themselves at the expense of everyone’s rights and safety. But it did give me a blueprint for how to “do something” for the next four years. Maybe it could even be a model for the rest of my life, after an adulthood of constantly making donations and signing online petitions but never feeling like I was doing enough to make the world better.

So without further ado, here are my practical lessons for “doing something” based on my experience setting up a Little Free Library in a community with an HOA. Because that’s like, totally a microcosm of local government in America, right?

First of all: Take initiative and be pleasantly persistent. I work in public relations for my day job. I’m not exactly a shrinking violet. I’m more than happy to make phone calls, send emails, and show up at meetings. I’m basically a professional pain in the ass–but a very polite and pleasant one for the most part! I also do improv and run my own PR business, so I’m used to thinking on my feet.

These were all very helpful skills to have.

I started by researching how to start a Little Free Library and emailing our HOA’s community manager. When he didn’t respond for a week, I was prepared for a fight. I showed up in-person at the next HOA board meeting to (pleasantly) bug him about my idea before things started. He was actually really excited about it and invited me to share my idea at the open forum. Caught off-guard by his enthusiasm, I just kind of spoke from the heart and made it up as I went along, presenting it in terms of being an author concerned about book access, and wanting to give something to the neighborhood. The HOA board surprised me by actually voting to approve it, as long as they could pick the base color.

Compromising on little things is not the end of the world. The longest part of this process? Waiting for the HOA to decide on a damn color. If I were a homeowner of a single-family plot with nobody telling me what to do with my property, I’d have picked a bright cerulean blue or maybe tried to emulate one of the more creative libraries you see on Little Free Library’s Instagram. But in order to get it done, I had to be OK with a base color that would sort of “match the aesthetic” of the buildings around it.

So “Walnut” it was. “Sometimes you’ve got to be OK with ‘Walnut’” is a new mantra of mine.

Put your own resources into it, if you can. The biggest thing that helped my case? I was willing to build the Little Free Library and pay for it myself. The powers that be are usually very receptive to new things if you’re willing to do most of the work to make them happen. Because we don’t have the necessary power tools, I ordered an assembly kit and official registry plaque from the Little Free Library website, and put it on our family’s “joint expenses” credit card.

On that note…

Enlist help. I would have been willing to do this even if it was a solo crusade, but it was actually really helpful to have my husband on my side for this. He would ask me if I’d heard from the HOA property manager, which prompted me to follow up with him. He was OK making the Little Free Library a household expense that month. He helped assemble it, and did all the heavy lifting when we had to move it. He even assisted with the actual installation, because I was too sick with norovirus to go near another human being on the day the maintenance guy came to help install it somewhere it wouldn’t hit a gas or water line in the park.

Be patient and also make it fun. I’ll be honest: there were a lot of follow-up emails involved with making this thing happen. I’m a naturally impatient person, so it was hard to wait. So once we got approval on the color, ordered the kit, assembled it, and scheduled an installation date, I very quickly drafted an email for the HOA manager to send to everyone on our listserv inviting them to a Little Free Library painting party in the park.

No kids showed up, but plenty of adults came out. The painting party that was supposed to be from 1-2:30 lasted until almost 5pm. People painted their dogs, butterflies, flowers, and rainbows. I learned that one of our neighbors is an incredibly talented children’s book illustrator outside of her day job, and she freehanded characters from Where the Wild Things Are, The Cat in the Hat, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Winnie the Pooh, and Dogman.

Ain’t no party like a Little Free Library painting party.

Be there for the administrative long haul. I’m now a registered Little Free Library steward, which means I set up the online account for our library and update the map information for it. I’m also basically the neighborhood book lady now, constantly reminding people that it’s there and available for anyone to take and share books. If supplies look like they’re running low, I comb my bookshelves for any titles I can put in there.

It’s not super-flashy, but it’s become something I really enjoy. I even have dreams now about restocking and rearranging books in the library. It’s hard for me to resist peeking in every time I walk by to see what people are taking (and I often don’t).

I cannot tell you how happy it’s made me to see people actively using it, and watch as the book supply turns over regularly. Side note: my adult neighbors love contemporary romance and self-help. The kids like books about sharks and dinosaurs and bunnies.

I still get depressed and angry about everything in the news. I still regularly feel like I’m not doing enough. But getting the Little Free Library in my neighborhood is going to be one of the things I think about on my deathbed when reflecting on what I’ve done to make the world a better place. That is, unless I’m hit by a bus, in which case there’s not much time for reflection.

I don’t know what the answer is to our current state, but we’re not going to post our way out of this. Do the boring, unsexy, administrative, pleasantly persistent stuff, and maybe you can make something good happen.