How to organize magazines is one of the popular questions asked in my Organize Your Paper Clutter online class, so I thought I’d share my system for keeping my vast collection of magazines under control. If you’ve stopped by this blog of mine a time or two, you may have picked up on my love of magazines. I have always, always loved to flip through magazines and catalogs. I think I love magazines the way some girls love shoes, and other girls love chocolate. Yet, the professional organizer side of me knows that too much of a good thing, when we’re not careful, can equal clutter.

So, here’s how I keep magazine clutter at bay.

1. Establish a home for your magazines.

Now, ideally this would be a single home, so that you always know how many magazines you have, and they don’t begin to take over, if you know what I mean. However, I have a couple of homes for my magazines. The most current magazines live in a reading basket in my family room, and the ones that I’m currently in the process of reading are on my night table. (Well, at least they were until I painted…now I’m in search of a new night stand, one with a drawer to hold a couple of books and magazines. Less clutter, if you know what I mean.)

Reading basket

 My reading basket is home to current magazines and books.

Magazines that I’m keeping for the long-haul are stored on shelves in my office storage closet. These are organized by title, year and month, and stored in magazine holders from IKEA.

2. Decide which magazines to keep long term.

There are several magazines I plan to keep indefinitely. These are mostly magazines that are no longer in print such as my Simple Scrapbooks, Cottage Living, Mary Englbreit, and Organize. I also include really great decorating magazines—special issues that are chock-full of great ideas—too many to clip. These magazines take up about nine (in total) magazine file boxes and just over one shelf. In addition, ever since the great magazine purge of 2009, I have allocated two magazine boxes for one year of Real Simple back issues.

Magazine holders

These magazine boxes are now home to magazines I’m keeping indefinitely, such as Cottage Living and the like. I now keep just one year of Real Simple back issues.

3. Decide what to clip.

So what about all the other magazines? Well…when my reading basket starts to get too full, I have a magazine clipping party. I tear out inspiring photos and articles that I will refer to again. And those last five words are key:  I try (really hard) to only keep clippings that I will actually use, or in other words, refer to again. This is something I learned the hard way, after over-accumulating a bunch of really lovely, or super interesting clippings that served no practical purpose in my life. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am using the word practical a bit loosely. I keep a few clippings around simply because the photos are inspiring.

4. Organize and store the clippings.

Immediately after clipping an article, I temporarily store it in this

[IN] PLACE SYSTEM Expanding Document Wallet organized into the following broad categories:

Magazine clippings organizer• To read

• Scrapbook ideas

• Recipes

• Decorating ideas

• Project ideas

• Organizing ideas

Then, once the document wallet gets full (or the mood strikes!) I move my clippings to one of several binders—such as my decorating ideas binder.

Magazine binder

This binder includes tabs for each room in my home. So when I come across a decorating idea that I love, I have to decide where I am likely to use this idea—the master bedroom, one of the kid’s rooms, etc. The clippings that make the cut, get stored in a sheet protector behind the appropriate room’s tab.

Aside from storing magazine clippings in this decorating binder, I also store paint and fabric swatches, my paint sample floor plan, and other decorating resources such as catalogs for window covering companies, and things like that.

Paint fabric swatches

5. Recycle everything else.

Once I go through my magazines and clip things I want to keep, the rest of the magazine gets recycled. If I don’t clip anything (or too much) from a magazine I take it to our library and place it on the free table, passing it along to a happier home. (And I try really hard not to take anything off the free table that will start the cycle all over again.)

So this is what I do…but this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the perfect system for you. For those of you who have taken my workshops you know that I don’t believe organizing is a one-size-fits-all proposition. The best organizing solution is the one that works for you.

For some people binders and sheet protectors are simply too much work for how often they will refer to their magazine clippings. For me, because I truly do use the items I clip…it’s a terrific system. It allows me to have my favorite ideas, photographs and articles just a flip or two away, all the time.

Do you have a great system for organizing your magazines and clippings? If so, I’d love to hear from you! Please share your ideas in the comments. And if you’re looking for a complete paper organizing system for every type of paper that comes into your home, my Organize Your Paper Clutter online class is for you! Class is now available as a self-paced online class that you can begin today!

Thanks for reading and sharing…I can’t wait to hear your ideas.