Posted in Organization

Simple journey Ministries Presents

Keep it Together, Girl!

Getting Your Magazines Organized

I have a confession to make. I LOVE magazines! I enjoy them so much, I often ask for subscriptions and renewals for gifts. I pick magazines up at yard sales and thrift stores. I purchase them at our local library's sales. I just love them!

What do I love about magazines? Well, mostly I enjoy the format of delivering information. Due to limited space and guidelines, authors write articles that are chock full of information that are short and concise. Craft magazines have lovely detailed pictures and instructions for projects. Information for websites and other goodies on the Internet are all located right in those articles. Any time I can gather research in a time effective format, I am a happy mama! Here is a sampling of some of my favorite magazines:

• Paper Crafts
• Mother Earth News
• National Review
• Martha Stewart Living
• Countryside, World News
• Biblical Archaeology
• Writers Digest
• Simple Scrapbooking
• Vegetarian Times
• Watercolor Magic
• The Old Schoolhouse
• Creating Keepsakes
• SEW News
• Digital Photographer
• Writers Journal
• Today's Christian Woman
• Crochet!
• Crochet Today
• Country Gardens
• Christianity Today
• TEACH
• Camera
• American Artist
• Sewing Savvy

As you can tell, I have not only an eclectic taste for magazine titles, but a LARGE list of the ones I enjoy reading. But what's a girl to do?

The only draw back is that I have found myself with piles of magazines from time to time. There was a time when I had boxes, shelves, and baskets filled with magazines. One day I realized there had to be a way to organize them so that I could refer back to them at anytime. The answer...BINDERS!

Yes, yet another great idea for binders. I use binders of all different sizes for magazines. I determine the size of the binder by the type of magazine. When I sat down and sorted through my magazines, I made 2 different areas: 1)Magazines to be kept in tact & 2) Magazines that had special articles or pictures. I had to be very discerning, meaning I had to go through each magazine. What I found was that magazines with art, such as Watercolor Magic, had so many great pictures & articles, I rarely wanted just one from the magazine. Other magazines, like Simple Scrapbooking, may have had only one or two pictures or articles that I wanted to keep for reference.

Magazines that I want to keep in their entirety, I slip into a page protector. This can be tricky with thicker magazines; and some will just not fit in the protectors. For those larger magazines I found project folders that would hold them AND fit in a binder. I group magazines either by title or by subject. They are kept in large 3" binders.

Those magazines that have only a few articles or pictures per issue that I want to save are stored in one of two ways: Subject or Magazine Title. I keep LOTS of scrapbook ideas, but never from just one source. I use 2" binders with page protectors. I carefully rip the ideas from the magazines and store them in the page protectors. Most of my crafting ideas are stored in binders that are simply grouped by the type of craft; sewing, scrapping, photography, crocheting, etc. There are some magazine titles that I pull articles from every issue I get, and may already be grouped, i.e. Biblical Archaeology. These are kept the same way, but the binders are for articles from those specific magazines only.

Currently, I keep new magazines for three months in magazine boxes. At the end of every three months I go through the magazines and store them appropriately. In this way I can keep the information I want, without having stacks of magazines everywhere! Additionally, I find I am more diligent about reading my magazines, knowing that I will be going through them!

These are my thoughts.