The coziness of being indoors sounds even more appealing when you have a book in hand. Whether you’re a book-lover or someone new to traditional reading, your at-home library experience is an essential part to making it feel worthwhile. For many who tend to have libraries in their home, once it’s initially built they don’t interact as much as they once did. Books collect dust for months on end, and before you know it where you once had a bookmark feels like it should be pushed back to the first page.
Here are our recommendations for building an at-home library that you’ll use and find beneficial in the long run.
Lead With Intention
With any goal in life, it’s important to remind yourself why you actually want to achieve said goal and the steps to get there. In building an at-home library, ask yourself the question of what you feel having this space in your home will do for you. Allowing your intentions to lead you to action is a sure way to motivate you to use it more often. For those that are not as self-motivated or find themselves getting easily distracted, utilizing reminders or alarms on your phone can help to keep track of time allocated to reading. Whether it’s grabbing a book from the library on the way to the office or flipping through a few pages before bed, goal setting with execution ideas are the best ways to kick-off usage in ways that don’t feel so heavy.
Remember The Details
Depending on the layout of your home, you may have the idea of your personal library being part of a similar or separate aesthetic from the remainder of the space. Building the aesthetic of your at-home library doesn’t have to be anything strenuous but the smaller details you incorporate could be what leads you to read more often. While retailers like Overstock, IKEA, and At Home have numerous designs that could fit the style you’re looking for, the elements around the space are where you want to emphasize making your eyes draw to subconsciously motivate you to read more.
Whether you’re simply placing the books on a tv console as a daily reminder, separately in a traditional book case, or adding shelves to an accent wall– let your creativity run wild. Items such as family photos, figurines, and candles are great items to place near your at-home library to give you reasons to reference the library more often. Placing potted plants near your at-home library is another subconscious way to use the library more to where watering your plants reminds you to pick up a book.
Strategically Order Your Books
On the road to completing books, some people often experience a lack of motivation or lose momentum as life’s responsibilities take over. To provide visual motivation to yourself to keep reading and leverage your at-home library more, it’s worth exploring how you place your books. Examples of this could look like using a separate shelf for all the books you’ve finished while unfinished ones sit on another shelf or placing new books you’re excited about closer to eye-level while other books sit further down in the library. Whichever placement order you decide, leaning deeper into the progress you’ve made can help feelings of reassurance to feel stronger. As you continue finishing books, you may even explore re-decorating or trying new arrangements for your in-house library which can also provide a level of excitement and motivation to keep going.
Create Incentives For Milestones That Are Achievable
Building off the aforementioned step of intentionality, part of that intention could also be tied to goal setting with rewards tied to them. Reading alone is already satisfactory, but the addition of rewards for yourself could be another motivator to help you use the library more often. Rewarding yourself for reading also helps with habit building to make it a part of your routine more easily. As humans we are also conditioned to enjoy instant gratification more over long-term satisfaction so this is a way to feed that. While the rewards you choose can be personally determined, the milestones you set can be as simple as finishing 10 pages or a chapter in a reading session. Once you hit your milestones, an example reward to yourself could be splurging on your favorite dessert after dinner or giving yourself a trade-off of time with watching an episode of that series you’ve been binge watching. Make the milestones worthwhile for yourself and personalized so that you get the utmost benefits from reading.
Using your at-home library relies a lot on self-discipline and accountability, but the tips above can help alleviate the pressure one may feel to complete so many within a specific timeframe or feel down about yourself because of the amount of time it’s taken you to get through a particular book. Regardless of where you are in your journey,