Our TBR Jar!

Do you have an ever growing stack or overflowing shelving unit of unread books? We do. Sometimes it's like when you sit staring at Netflix, scrolling through the hundreds of choices but just can't pick anything so you watch the same thing you've seen multiple times...but with books. So to help us choose one of our 3 TBR's each month we created this little jar.

Now in no way am I claiming inventor status for this - of course I know many before me have done similar or perhaps the same thing, but as we loved how it turned out I thought it'd be nice to include the how, what, why's of our TBR Jar!

(Oh, also, I say TBR like I assume everyone knows what that means. Many bookish pals will but for those who don't it means 'To Be Read'!)

Starting off with the basis for this project we needed a jar and luckily enough we have a mini hoard as anything we buy in one, the jar gets washed out and reused! ( Click here and have a peek at the behind the scenes of the 'upcycling'!) The lids all get painted black so that they look more uniform in the cupboard despite their differing sizes and the only extra we did for this jar was to add a chalkboard paint 'label' and some glitter paint!

As for how it actually works, it's simple. I originally cut some strips of coloured paper on my guillotine, added the names of all of our current books to them, folded them and put them in the jar. For new books coming in we have extra paper strips in the little candle holder thingy and can just grab one and write the books name on it before it gets put on the shelves.
At the end of December when choosing our January TBR we both picked from the jar and then it went on our lists!

We have allowed a 3 rule re-pick in the event of picking out a book we have already read (all books are in there unless we have both read them already, so no Potter or Rings) or just generally don't really fancy. It's be really fun so far and I hope to continue it into the following years. Fingers crossed we read enough so that adding new books doesn't cause an overflow...!