Organizing Your Magazine Inspirations

One day I decided to make the most of the piles of magazine subscriptions I had accumulated over the years. My goal was to organize a collection of all the useful and interesting information and put it in one easy to access book.

Here's how I did it and you can to:

1) Rip and Pitch - Time to get down and dirty. Go through each magazine and rip or cut out pages that have something on it that you want to be able to refer to later like a recipe you might like to try, a home improvement idea you think is cool, a garden layout, etc. Remember that in some magazines that pictures and "how-to" articles may be separated so be sure to get all the parts you want to remember especially with recipes. I am really big on having pictures with my recipes, so I rip out everything I think I may need knowing that I can trim them down later.

Once you get through all of your magazines, you will have a stack of important stuff and the rest you can pitch. (Remember to BE GREEN, so make sure you put all the left overs in your recycle bin.)

2) Categorize, categorize, categorize - Go through everything your ripped out and separate them out into categories - recipes, gift ideas, holidays, home improvement ideas. Even under each category you may want to break them down into sub-categories. For example, under Recipes you may want to break it down into main dishes, desserts, vegetables, etc. and under holidays you may want to separate information for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc.

3) Trim it up and tape it up - As you now go through each category and sub-categories, trim up those articles if you haven't all ready so your book will look nice. Grab your paper and some tape or glue stick and start piecing together all your clippings. Put your pages in plastic sheet covers to keep them protected. Remember that you will probably want to keep adding to your book so leave the back of a sheet empty if you don't have enough clippings to put on front and back right now.

4) Label and Love - Put all your plastic sheets in a handy 3-ring binder and add some tabs to label where your categories start and end. Put your binder in an easily accessible place and use it. When you make a recipe, make some notes on the page whether you liked it or not or things you would change for next time. You'll love flipping through all the pages when you need inspired to make something.

Materials:

• Magazines
• Notebook or plain paper
• Plastic sheet protectors
• Binder or 3-ring notebook
• Scissors
• Tape or glue sticks
• Separator tabs
• Pen

Things you'll find in my book:

Recipes that I have found, made and modified with elements from other recipes I've made in the past to make "my own" recipe.

All different types of recipes with "pictures." I'm a very visual person and feel that if it looks good, that it's got to taste good. I let the pictures capture my eye then I read the recipe.

I've also included full articles on "how-to" do certain things. Again I love pictures and there are loads of great pictorial articles to keep track of.

I also love all the seasonal articles on how you can decorate for different holidays and gift ideas. I clip these out and use them to help inspire me to find ways to make them myself.