Bookish Fun

Making a TBR Jar

Hey, everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. Happy late Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates. I hope you had a great holiday.

Today I have a bit different post: I’m showing you how I made my TBR jar. I’ve been wanting to make one of these for a while. I started making it a few months ago, but then got busy. So I took advantage of some free time and was able to finish it!

I didn’t have an actual jar and I didn’t want to go buy one, so I ended up using an empty ice cream container. Talenti is one of my favorite ice cream brands, especially because they have the 5 layer kind. I wanted a glass jar, but I couldn’t find one that we had around the house that fit the requirements I wanted: a screw on lid so I could easily cap the jar, and one that my hand could fit into. So I went with a plastic one.

Along with the jar, I got construction paper in all the colors of the rainbow. I decided to make each color a different genre. This the color coding that I used:

❤️ – romance
🧡 – nonfiction
💛 – science fiction
💚 – historical fiction
💙 – fantasy
💜 – mystery
💖* – contemporary

*on some devices, this is shown as red. it’s supposed to be pink.

To make the little slips of paper, I wrote down all the book titles on the piece of paper, cut them into strips, and then into individual pieces. The ones with stars on them indicate that they’re part of a series. Some genres took less time than others; fantasy and contemporary took the longest. No surprise there.

Afterwards, I folded them in half and then in half again so I won’t be able to see the writing when I pick one from the jar. The jar is filled to the top with paper. I have a lot of books to get through.

I haven’t found a way yet to make sure I add books to the jar that I add to my online TBR list. Maybe I’ll do some kind of weekly update to the jar. If you have a TBR jar, what’s your method for adding to it?

Ta-da, here it is! My fabulous TBR jar in all its glory. I love all the bright colors, even if there are dominating amount of blue and pink and hardly any orange and yellow. We’ll work on trying to balance it out. My plan on how to use this is that when I don’t know what to read, I’ll pick a title from the jar. If I want a specific genre, I’ll pick according the color; if I don’t care, I’ll pick blindly. I plan to read the first title I grab, but I may sometimes pick again if I’m not in the mood for some reason, like it’s a series and I want a standalone.


Do you have a TBR jar? How did you make yours?

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