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Service, Homeschooling and Second Harvest Curriculum

It is an honor to be asked by Kids in the House to share about topics that I live and love: Service, Homeschooling and Second Harvest Curriculum. Now a little about myself and what I hope to contribute to this fantastic resource website.

My name is Lory, and since January 2013 I have been the owner of Second Harvest Curriculum which is a web based business where families can buy and sell used homeschool curriculum. Our website address is www.usedhomeschoolbooks.com.

I am happily married to my best friend Gary for 28 years.  We have a small acreage where we garden and raise sheep, goats, poultry and cats.  We are parents to 3 grown sons, but more about them later. 
We started into homeschooling when our youngest son was in the 8th grade.  The country school he was going to closed down. Our son was not ready for public school and neither were we.  So with the help of many homeschool friends, we took the plunge and we successfully homeschooled our son from 8th-12th grade. 

Susan, one of my homeschool friends was a Math U See rep for many years, and for 6 years I worked for her part-time shipping, processing orders and data entry. I learned a lot about homeschool families and customer service.  In June 2010 Susan purchased SHC from another homeschool mom Shelley.  I continued to learn about many other curriculums, customer service and much more.

SHC has been in business since 1993.  We purchase all our stock from Homeschool Families and Christian schools. Our site provides a platform that allows homeschoolers and Christian schools to buy used books, as well as sell their used material passing it on to the next family so they can benefit from the curriculum. This ensures families and schools will have a means to contribute to others by selling their gently used books to SHC, who in turn rates the books according to our condition codes and then is able to provide the curriculum for far less than it would be new.

One of the best parts of my day is on the phone sharing with homeschoolers.  Often, I get a lot of “I just found your site and I am so excited”, “thank you for what you do” or “I need to talk to someone about what I need to get to homeschool my children”.  Sharing our experience, strength and hope with each other whether we are veteran homeschoolers, new and afraid, or somewhere in between is helpful to all of us.  I am always looking to learn something and then find opportunities to share this knowledge with my customers.

Sometimes, we get calls from someone who ordered the wrong book or is not happy with the book and would like to send it back. Customer satisfaction is very important, especially for a small business and we have no problems offering refunds. Our 30 day money back guarantee is already in place. 

My contribution to Kids in the House blog in the coming months will be more about Second Harvest Curriculum, cost cutting tips, curriculums we are considering adding, the joys of owning your own business, my boys and more.

Want to know more about our business but don’t want to wait for the next blog post? Visit our website at www.usedhomeschoolbooks.com, to view the different curriculums in stock, as well as read some homeschool related articles that are posted on our website and blog. Find us on Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest  and feel free to email questions to me directly at shc@usedhomeschoolbooks.com.

Again, I’m excited to contribute to this website, and I hope to do so in a meaningful way to show the benefits of homeschooling, as well as offer insight into owning a small business.

Lory Power's picture

Lory Power & her husband Gary had the honor of homeschooling their youngest son Dylan Jr. high through graduation. With that experience Lory enjoys listening & sharing with homeschool moms about the joys & trials of homeschooling & finding good used homeschool curriculum.  Lory has worked for Second Harvest Curriculum since June 2010 & has owned Second Harvest Curriculum since January 2013.Their website address is www.usedhomeschoolbooks.com.