You can hold onto your favorite magazine collections by simply cutting out the pictures, articles, recipes you want and recycling the rest. Imagine letting go of over 50% of those piles without getting rid of what matters most to you. Here's what I do when I get my monthly subscription of Sunset Magazine:
Are you like many… a collector of magazines? Are they piled high in your living room, office, bedroom, or bathroom? Do you keep them near out of fear of throwing away a perfectly good article? If so, this organizing tip is for you.
You can hold onto your favorite magazines and beat the clutter by following these simple steps each time a new one arrives in the mail.
Here’s what I do when I get my monthly subscription of Sunset Magazine: I cut out the articles and recipes that I want and recycle the rest immediately. It’s as simple as that! Imagine letting go of over 50% of those piles without getting rid of what matters most to you. In the process you have glanced at the entire magazine and cut out what you REALLY want to get to later when you have more time. Tip: Before tossing the leftovers, cut off the name & address label. Always shred or cut up your personal information before sending it to the recycle bin.
Next, I grab a few file folders for my cut outs. This color blue makes me happy, so I use these instead of boring beige. There are so many colors and designs to choose from out there…use what you like!
I created my own favorite categories: “Thing to Do,” “Things to Eat & Drink,” and “Things to Read & Feel Good About.” Customize file folders to your liking and lifestyle…”Places to Visit,” “Things to Buy,” “Business Tips,” and “Reference Photos” are examples. Be careful! Only make a few folders, you don’t want to end up with a file cabinet full of magazine cut outs. Keep it SIMPLE.
This is my set-up: labeled file folders, stapler, scissors, and magazine. I tear out pages and neatly trim, or cut out pieces of a page I want to keep. I staple together multiple pages of an article to keep them together.
My three categories: “Things to Do” (left), “Things to Eat & Drink” (center), and “Things to Read & Feel Good About” (right). Out of a 58-page magazine, I am keeping 18 pages. I am cutting my magazine paper clutter down by 69%!
Next, I bring my desktop file holder into the picture. This is where I neatly store my magazine file folders. I keep it all here and nowhere else, and can place it on my desk, the kitchen counter or out in the open anywhere else in the house without it being an eyesore. When I act on something, I remove the page and recycle it.
If it’s a recipe I make and love, I move it to my recipe binder in the kitchen. If it’s a Thing to Do and I do it, I yell out “I’m so adventurous (or) creative!” and recycle the page, making room for new adventures and creations. If I successfully read it, the information is absorbed and bye-bye the paper goes. If I want to share something I absolutely love from the magazine, I mail it to a friend and in an enclosed note briefly write about my experience. It’s been too long since we’ve mailed REAL letters.
If you use a desktop file holder, you can instead use the hanging files themselves as folders, and insert a labeled tab. I personally like to place file folders within a hanging folder for ease of removing and taking with me for the day, such as when I need to go shopping for ingredients, or want to take it to a friends when recruiting partners for an adventure. IMPORTANT NOTE: If your magazine files get fatter and fatter and you’re not having fun or achieving things in life, it’s because you’re not acting on them! It’s time to put your magazine collections to use! They are building up clutter…so dive in, take action, have some fun & get things done!
Isabella having fun in Death Valley, CA. 2011 – The Racetrack
More ways to prevent magazine collection & paper pile-up, have fun, and get things done:
Use shredded magazine leftovers as shipping material.
Use magazines to create fun collages with the kids or a vision board for yourself.
Download this Stop Junk Mail Kit created by the Bay Area Recycling Outreach Coalition for numbers to call and websites to visit to be removed from Catalogs you no longer want to receive, Direct Marketing lists, Credit Card offer lists, Sweepstakes, Shopping Flyers, Junk Faxes, and more.
READ MORE BELLA ORGANIZING TIPS, IDEAS & TRAVELS HERE.
Isabella Guajardo, also known as Girl With A Truck™, is a professional home organizer and a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). Living in Oakland and Monterey, she travels in her truck to work with clients throughout the SF Bay Area, East Bay, South Bay, Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz and Monterey Peninsula. She shares simple and creative ways to stay organized and stylish while reducing, recycling and re-purposing. Join Bella Organizing on Facebook. Gift certificates are available.
Call (510) 229-7321 to schedule a complimentary telephone consultation.
I took my first Fashion class this semester at Monterey Peninsula College. Learning to sew on a machine is something I have always wanted to do, but with my busy travel and client schedule between Monterey and the SF Bay Area (I live in both places and work here, there, and everywhere in between) I never thought it possible to just plop a solid semester class down in my schedule book for a four month period. Being a professional organizer, I should also be able to manage my time, right? So I just did it. I set aside Tuesdays as “sewing class day” and led my life and business around it. It was a treat to myself that I’m grateful to have experienced.
During the semester the instructor Carla of Carla Renee Couture took us on field trips around the Monterey Peninsula to visit shops that exemplify sewing craft & creativity. One of these places was the bright and colorful Tessuti Zoo in Pacific Grove, Calif.
Tessuti Zoo inside[clear]Just peer into the front windows and gasp at the abundance of unique gifts, clothing, jewelry, art quilts, furniture, dolls, toys, books, and home décor. It’s full of hand-made treasures that will make you happy just looking at them.
The owners name is Emily Owens, and she took our sewing class on a personal tour through her in-store studio, which includes shelves of the most delightful fabric I have ever seen.
Emily Ann, owner of Tessuti Zoo in Pacific Grove, CA
Emily uses uniquely designed fabric to sew dolls, quilts, and re-upholster old chairs, making them beautiful once again (see the one to her lower right in the photo). Some of the fabric she sews with is made by Kaffe Fassett, a fabric and color design artist out of Big Sur (now living in London) that creates knit, needlepoint, patchwork and painted patterns of repetition and repeating motifs. See Kaffe Fassett: Dreaming in Color.
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Felts, feathers, beads and buttons adorn the one of a kind hand-made dolls at Tessuti Zoo. Functional designs by local artists can also be found there. I picked up the cutest turqoise mermaid clock that now lives in my Oakland kitchen.
Halloween creatures at Tessuti Zoo
Fun clocks at Tessuti Zoo
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It’s in my nature to want to see how creative people store their craft supplies, so I just had to know how she organizes hers. Emily kindly let me around and to my glee she reuses glass jars to store her beads! I LOVE repurposing food jars for just about everything, and here she uses large and small mason jars to display beads so she can find them with a glance.
Small see-through drawer organizers house different types of buttons by color and take up little space. You can find them at many home and hardware stores.
Bead storage in the Tessuti Zoo Design StudioButton storage for all colors and varieties
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There are oodles of supplies required for sewing and craftwork…clasps, zippers, velcro, feathers, ribbons, tools… all of which need to have little homes of their own. Emily repurposed an old library card catalogue box and labeled accordingly.
There’s a lot of jewelry to choose from at Tessuti Zoo, all creatively displayed on organizers and display racks she made or found throughout the Monterey Bay (that’s me in the mirror.)
Craft supply storageDisplayed jewelry
This field trip was a fabulous example of how a sewing skill, passion, and creativity can evolve into just about anything you want, and for Emily Owens it is Tessuti Zoo.
Tessuti zoo inventory is one-of-a-kind and constantly changing, so Emily’s website is informational only. Visit her store in Pacific Grove, a small town adjacent to Monterey, next time you’re in the area to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
As for me and my newfound fashion sewing skills, I don’t think I’ll be making more clothing anytime soon. But now that I know how to hem my own pants and drapes you know what I’ll be doing in my free time! I’ll be utilizing these new skills to work on projects around the house…I certainly won’t let what I learned fade away.
Knowing how to sew is a skill I respect greatly after having experienced the challenges I did this semester and sewing a final project garment from scratch. Now when I choose something to wear for the day, I stop and take a close look at the material, seams, how it was put together, and am in constant awe at how much time and talent it takes to weave fabric and sew a garment. I appreciate the clothing in my closet and other hand-sewn items I own more than ever before.
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READ MORE BELLA ORGANIZING TIPS, IDEAS & TRAVELS HERE.
Isabella Guajardo, also known as Girl With A Truck™, is a professional home organizer and a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). Living in Oakland and Monterey, she travels in her truck to work with clients throughout the SF Bay Area, East Bay, South Bay, Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz and Monterey Peninsula. She shares simple and creative ways to stay organized and stylish while reducing, recycling and re-purposing. Join Bella Organizing on Facebook. Gift certificates are available.
Call (510) 229-7321 to schedule a complimentary telephone consultation.
Isabella Guajardo, also known as Girl With A Truck™, is a professional home organizer and a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). Living in Oakland and Monterey, she travels in her truck to work with clients throughout the SF Bay Area, East Bay, South Bay, Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz and Monterey Peninsula. She shares simple and creative ways to stay organized and stylish while reducing, recycling and re-purposing. Join Bella Organizing on Facebook. Gift certificates are available.
Call (510) 229-7321 to schedule a complimentary telephone consultation.
