I thought I’d share a quick tip with you that will help you to keep your organised space…well, organised.

Boundaries.

For me, this is one of the best ways to keep things under control.

I have one lever arch file folder for my household filing (phone, bond, water and electricity, insurance, credit card, etc.).

When things get too much, I need to declutter as I’m not prepared to create any more space than just that one file.

As for magazines, this is the container I use.

I allow myself just this one basket for any reading material. Ignore the tangled phone extension cord.

If this basket ever becomes too full, I have to go through and declutter it.

Two questions for you:

Do you have organising boundaries like these in your home?

How many magazines do you allow to flow in before they have to flow out?

This is just a sample of the tips you’ll receive on the virtual Spring into Organising workshop.

I have so many questions for the ask the organiser category that I wonder if the people are still reading!!!

Anyway, my friend Roz asked me this a few months ago and I answered very briefly in an email but then she texted me again a few weeks ago and so I thought I’d better answer properly

What do you do with articles from magazines that you want to keep for reference at a later stage?

In days past (I went back to check on my blog – 2007!) I used to keep a lot of magazine clippings, like this.

Here’s the blog post I wrote 4 years ago.

And now, my honest-to-goodness answer is … I’ve stopped keeping articles as they were too much of a schlep to file and my current style is to google anything and everything.

Doctor says something… I google.

Someone argues with me about something… I google

I don’t know what to do about toddlers and discipline… I google

You get the picture.

I don’t experience something and think, “hmmm, now where is that article I pulled out of Your Baby magazine 3 years ago?”

It just never happens.

BUT I do pull inspirational pics from magazines for my vision boards (I always have one in the making) and for my Good Ideas file.

So I’ll talk about my Good Ideas file.

This is very simply a 30-page flip file where I put things I like.

Kind-of the old-fashioned version of Pinterest.

I have lots of beautiful spaces in there – things I could do and things that are just nice to look at.

My key is I restrict all my magazine ripping out to this one 30-page flipfile.

When the file gets full, I go through it and take out things that are no longer my style or things I’ve actually tried to create.

Roz, hope this helped you.

For the rest of you, do you pull articles from magazines? How do you organise yours? Please share your ideas in the comments and feel free to link to your blog post if you’ve ever posted on this.

Magazines received while in the hospital last month…

What have you decluttered today?

P.S. Read these two posts to get ideas to organise magazines

For someone who does not own a single magazine subscription, I sure do manage to accumulate a lot of magazines.

For this picture, I went around the house and collected everything in sight!

1. I keep them mainly in the bathrooms (ahem) because that’s where they mostly get read. When I find something good, I tear it out there and then so I don’t waste time looking for a recipe later. Because of course then I’d get sidetracked and look at all the gorgeous pictures again

2. The only time I get through a lot of magazines quickly is when I get my car washed. I take 3 – 4 magazines with me and use the waiting time to read, tear out articles and declutter.

3. I also like taking magazines with me when I’m taking a long plane trip, about 8 hours or more. It’s nice because when I’m done, I offer it to the passengers who look like they need something else other than in-flight entertainment. I’m helpful like that And the best is I can leave them right there on the aircraft!

4. When I go through magazines, my motto is always less is more. So I try very hard not to keep anything I know deep down I’m not going to need or use. I know myself and even though a recipe might look delicious, it’s not likely to be something I try and cook/ bake if it’s in the least bit complicated

Of course, once I have the 2 – 3 pages per magazine, I use my beloved flipfiles/ display folders to organise them. And since Barb wrote about her great ideas notebook, I started a Gorgeous Things flipfile too with beautiful furniture, houses I like, etc. It’s good to dream.

By the way, the short flights to PE and CT don’t work for magazines. That’s strictly e-book time. I finished 150 pages of reading on this last trip down to Cape Town in between the eating and chatting. I use a plastic book bag like this which works very, very well.

1. Organising/ storage ideas
2. Health
3. Fitness
4. Creativity
5. Financial
6. Christmas ideas
7. Passion (largely due to my work at the church)
8. Recipes to try

I like the 20-page ones although most of these are of the 10-page variety. Just because they’re more readily available.

5. Every 6 – 12 months, depending on how many magazines I’ve been reading, I’ll quickly flip through the flipfile to see if I can throw anything away. Sometimes our tastes change and you now know without a shadow of doubt that you’ll not be doing mosaic art anytime soon (I’m just saying!).