apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'm really passionate about magazines, so I have to limit myself in a couple ways to avoid the subscription clutter. 1) Only buy off the rack 2) try to only buy magazines with limited advertising and with a lot of artistic merit

#2 helps keep the content timeless and justifies the off the rack price

Handmade zines can also be really beautiful and are a good addition to the coffee table (instead of heavy books)

some fashion and design magazines I buy strictly for inspiration, and i keep those with my design books.

I look at mags in the library. If a picture grabs me, I can photocopy it.

I do the same thing, with the binders. Though some magazines I do keep forever. I still have some issues of Martha Stewart Living from when I was in HS - over 10 years ago!

I used to use binders, but ultimately failed because the plastic sleeves were just too much hassle. I guess I save more, and some of my magazines pages are too large for sleeves (Martha Stewart's Living, for example), so they'd have to be trimmed down.

Now I just use several 2-pocket folders stored in a magazine holder. (File folders don't work well because odd-size clippings slip out.) Faster and easier, which means it's more likely to get done.

I rip out inspirational pages and store them in a legal sized expanding file folder that has a handle on top. The file has sections so I can organize clippings by room, color inspiration, art project ideas, etc.

I do the same thing with binders. I ended up creating different binders to seperate out different catagories (yes...i have a magazine problem!) I have binders titled "inside" "outside" "travel" & one for recipes to try. Not only has creating the binders helped to control clutter, I have so much fun putting these together!

Forgot to mention that some magazines are offering digital subscriptions which are great. I just subscribed to Canadian House & Home and am liking the online experience. I'm finding myself reading more and more design blogs and am using Flickr to save and organize photos that are inspiring.

The strategy that works for me:

1) Hold fast to the notion that little or nothing is original or unique. So, few of the ideas or images you find must be Preserved Or Forever Lost. Fewer than you think, at least. Usually. No matter how much Wow it generates at first sight, it's probably not all that special.

2) Revel in the Information Age. If I decide I want to go looking for inspiration, I can very easily find several hundred times more information than I could ever dream of actually consuming. There are mags by the hundreds, all of them churning out new issues every month (and many of which have years of archives at my local library). There are tons of books from every perspective, again at the library, and also in the ever-expanding design/decor section of any large bookstore. And that's not even touching the internet (or HGTV, if that's your speed).

3) Frown upon paper. Just decide not to store it (though I make some exceptions). I do keep things electronically - but if I can't be bothered to scan it, do I really care about it that much?

I'm not a natural ascete, so I have to keep these principles consciously in mind. But I know that doing so helps me avoid a lot of complication, which is quite a high priority.

does anyone know who sells those blue chairs?

I use Google Reader as my filing system. Since so many blogs simply recycle what's in the shelter mags, I don't feel the need to actually read any of the mags.

I subscribe to a bunch of home design blogs using Reader; when I see an image or blog post I like, I tag it - "bathrooms," "pillows," "bedding," "black and white," "small space living," or whatever. I've had good luck re-finding inspirational images this way. Google Reader's Search function is also pretty good in cases where I forgot to tag something properly.

Is this totally OCD of me? I'm not sure...

I take a stack of my mags. to the dentist and/or doctors office. Their selections are usually Sports Illustrated or People, neither of which I care about. Having said that, I am starting to let my subscriptions run their course and I won't be renewing. I can usually find what I want on the internet.

I scan or download my favorite designs, and then create photo albums/slide shows on my mac.

Toss them all the minute I'm done with them; if there were any pages I wanted to keep for inspiration, I rip them out and put them in a folder.

I used to rip out pages, but I tend to rip out too many. Now I take a photo and post it on my flickr site, using Photoshop to make sure colors are as accurate as possible.

those blue chairs are DWR

LaDonnaNichole, thanks. How long ago did they have them there? They seem to be gone now.

i file Domino, Elle Decor, and Living Etc. i'm surprised at how much new inspiration i get from them when i go through them all 6 months later. i tend to get random mags off-the-rack or from work and i keep white binders to file tear sheets...

Very simply, I rip or cut out the page and sloppily glue-stick it into a plain paper scrap book. I typically default to putting each on a seperate page, eventually I'll notice some groupings and I'll label the page/s and try to categorize as I add more. There is NO reason to save magazines, they are all AT LEAST 25% ads... some could be much more. And regardless of the ads, I think its rare to find much more than a half dozen articles that you would ever want to read twice in one magazine.

I have a bunch of labeled boxes in my meticulously-nerdily-organized studio closet ;-) of things like "Future Apt Plans", "Dream House", "Color Ideas" etc. that I put magazine tearsheets in each month. I have many, many times referred to those boxes too.

Current month issues (before they've been torn up) are kept in a vintage '50s magazine holder next to my favorite armchair.

I also have a handful of magazines that I'm completely devoted to ... those I have in neat stacks lined up inside a row of low console tables in my living room. I have also referred to those often too.

I'm particularly fond of magazines like Domino(?) that come with those handy little sticker tabs that you can put on pages instead of dog-earing them ... so much easier to find your favorite pages!

Magazines haunt me! I have cut way back on subscriptions and only allow myself one weekly (New York) and two others (current O at Home and Runner's World).

Anything more than that and they just pile up everywhere. Then I have spend several hours going through them and ripping out pages. Then the piles of pages sit around in place of the magazines until I don't know why I saved them and throw them out.

I'm thinking about using the copier at work to scan more "informational" articles that I keep - like vacation spots and shopping ideas. The actual pages of those are not important, just the content.

I only have a suscription to one magazine (not a design mag). when i've done reading it I toss it.

they all go into a pile by the door and i recycle them at will. i haven't ripped out anything inspirational in a long time.

campari -

so funny but I thought the exact same thing about the chairs when I saw the picture for this post. I was entertaining the idea of writing to DWR to see if they can tell me if they've discontinued them. I can let you know if I hear back.

I think I have taken magazine organization to a new level. I just received my velobind machine today, with which I will bind torn out sheets of magazines together. It's much more compact that putting them in plastic pockets... and unfortunately the apartment is so small that this sort of thing makes a difference.