HOW NOT TO "HURT" YOUR BOOKS

Hello my fellow bookworms!

I moved the house about two months ago, and when I was moving the books, I was unpleasantly surprised about them turning very yellow-ish (which is obviously not a good thing for a book to be). And since I'm an awful human and have just recently realised how badly I had been treating my books for months, I've decided to do some research and share some of the information I found about storing and taking care of our little paper friends.

What to do to keep your books nice and bright? Here are a few tips that can help a LOT.

1. Don't leave them in humid enviroment. I do not know why but they don't like it. The paper gets wet as it absorbs the humidity from the air and the pages of your favourite book can turn wrinkly pretty quick and you can have quite a lot of trouble with mold and mildew growing in between your favourite pages (and you don't want that, now do you?). Your books need to be dry to be pretty.

2. Keep them away from heating and direct sunlight. They do not like too much warmth, either. This can cause the opposite - that is, your books getting too dry and in the worst scenarios they can start crumbling. Direct sunlight can cause the ugly yellowishness and discoloration. Definitely don't do the stupid thing I did and do not, for the love of god, do not place them on your windowsills.

This is not something you want, guys. Trust me.

3. Shelve them upright. Do it. Don't put them in weird positions (definitely do not put them vertically on their spines or the side opposite to the spine). Shelving them flat is all right, too, but if you're stacking them, you should change the positions of the books to release the tension from time to time. Keep in mind that your books should also have some room above them so the binding doesn't get bumped when you manipulate with them.

4. Dust them regularly. You should find the time to do this task and dust your loves with a soft cloth. Remember to dust them from the spine outward. You can also use the vacuum cleaner.

5. Don't touch them with dirty hands. You should always wash your hands, especially after eating, before cuddling your books.

6. Don't crack the spine. With hardbacks, you can sometimes come to a problem of not being able to open the book as much as you'd like. Do not force it. Rather than cracking it open, put the book on its spine (the only excuse for putting in on its spine!) and let the covers gently open. Then, slowly and carefully, start releasing the pages until you get to the centre of the book. Remember that you should never leave the book lying open facedown.

This is how you do it when your hardback is hard to open.

7. If something happens to your book, you should let a specialist handle it. If, however, you feel like you're handy enough to manage doing the repairing, you can check out these three good tips on how to do it yourself.

And last but not least - shower your books with love, they deserve it!