Organizing: 101

I‘ve been working on getting organized this month of January and I’ve made some progress. My office nook is straightened and decluttered now and that junk drawer in the kitchen got completely cleaned out. But, I’ll admit it…I need some tips and ideas on getting better organized with my magazines. I currently subscribe to 3 different magazines: Traditional Home (my very fave!), Better Homes & Gardens (simply because they offer such darn good deals, I can’t pass them up…just try not renewing sometime & see what kind of deal they will make you), and more recently Country Home (again, got a $5 per year offer & couldn’t pass it up), so needless to say, I have way too many magazines sitting around. Like most of you, I so enjoy sitting down with a magazine and a cuppa something hot and delicious and getting lost in the beautiful pictures, dreaming of changes to my own decor. What ideas will I get? What can I incorporate from an inspiring article in my own home? As you can see with the above issues, I have found some diningroom chandlier inspirations that caught my eye. I’m happy to say, that little project is behind me already.
I‘ve even tried the 3-ring binder idea, tearing out beautiful magazine articles with pictures and inserting them in binders with labels, so that I can go back and find these pictures later. You never know when you might need one of these ideas or pictures! The problem is, I don’t seem to stay up with organizing them all nice and neat in the binders. This binder is several years old and I’m sure I could go back and throw much of it away now.
So, my magazines end up like this. All stacked up for months in the magazine holder in our bedroom by the easy chair. I will browse them, stick them back in the pile, pick one of them out later to look at again. You can never look at the pictures too many times, can you?
And then, they will finally make their way to my office nook where I stack them month to month. A whole year or 2 of Traditional Home. I can’t seem to get rid of these, since they are my favorite. But how many years can you really comfortably keep and not have it be ridiculous. I mean, do I really think I’ll go back 2 years and look at all of these again. Probably not, but still I can’t let them go. So…..what do you do? I need real ideas and tips on what all of you do to keep the magazines under control and not let them take over the house? Do you do the tear-out method and keep favorite articles filed neatly away? Put them in binders or folders for later use? Or do you gladly give them away, knowing that another beautiful magazine will arrive in the mail and it will soon take it’s place beside your easy chair? These are Southern Living and Better Homes & Gardens. I can sooner let these go than my Traditional Home, so I think it’s time to find them a home. I know lots of places take magazine donations, so I really need to think about getting rid of some of these. I know I’ve heard some girls say that they are scanning their favorite magazine articles and keeping them on discs. That’s an idea too, but again, that takes time.
And that brings me to my recipes. Oh. my. word! Would you look at all these recipes! You can see my organizational skills for this part of my life is not any better than the magazines. I tend to pick up, tear out, copy recipes all the time and they land all in a heap in one of my kitchen drawers. I sometimes have to go through all of them to find the one I’m looking for. And no, I haven’t even made all these recipes, but I just might need it one day! I will know just the one, it’s spattered and folded and I usually remember just what it looks like, I just have to find it. So, as you can see, I really need some ideas for the recipes too. How do you handle those? I do have a cute little recipe box, but it will not hold all of these and besides I’d have to reduce them all down to 3×5 index card size to fit in that box & I don’t think I want to tackle that. I’ve thought about getting another binder with dividers for catagories: Appetizers, Soups, Salads, Meats, etc. and then putting these in clear plastic holders. Has anyone tried that? Seems like it would work pretty well.

And you all thought I had it totally together, didn’t you?! Well, this will show you how much I don’t in some areas! Don’t you feel better now? I’d much rather be redoing a lampshade or painting something than organizing. I’d love to hear from all of you on how you handle organizing around your house…especially with magazines & recipes!

Thank you ALL again for coming by to visit me! I love to hear from you and I’m so glad you enjoyed the new lampshade project.