Beth: TBR Jars - The Joys & Horrors

Today's post is going to be about TBR jars: the joys and the horrors!
Before I got Goodreads, I had no idea about 'TBR' in general.
If you didn't know, TBR stands for To Be Read, and it is basically books you'd like to read in the future, whether that be next week or next year.
You may be thinking "if I can have it all on Goodreads, why on earth do I need a jar too?"
Well, firstly, let me explain what a TBR jar is.
It's basically a jar filled with slips of paper which have the names of books you want to read on them.
I've had a TBR jar for quite a while now, and I can definitely see the benefits and the downsides of having one. I'm going to list them below!
Benefits

• Being controlled with your spending. It is pretty hard to resist purchasing books, but having the excitement of picking a book from your TBR jar helps you do this.
• The excitement. Whenver you need to buy a new book (if you haven't got one to read next), then you dig in to pick a new read.
• They look so pretty, and they're really creative.
• There's loads of great ideas for them, some of which I'll tell you about below.

Downsides

• They're not very portable. It would be slightly weird to carry around a glass jar full of your favorite book names.
• You have to find a jar. Okay, this isn't the hardest, but it does require some effort.
• It takes a while to write them all out, especially if you have a long TBR list.

Ideas

• Plain paper or lined paper: Best if you want to be quick!
• Patterened & colored paper: To be extra pretty.
• Oragami: Specifically paper stars, can be really nice.
• Watercolor or painted paper, also really pretty!
• Decorate your jar, with either stickers, paper cut outs or glass paint.

As you can see from the featured photo in this post, my massive TBR jar is no where near full. I'm going to be filling it with watercolor and plain paper strips.
Thanks for reading!
-Beth
May your shelves (and TBR jar) overflow with books! ☽