Condensing Magazine Patterns & Articles

We begin our organizing adventure today with just that - beginning! Like me I'm sure that you have every intention of getting organized. You might have even planned what you would like to organize, but as the week progresses suddenly you realize it's Thursday again and you haven't organized a thing!! Well, that was almost me. I actually did do some organizing this week, but failed to organize my patterns, if you can believe that. I organized my spice cabinet and a utility shelf (which I failed to take pictures of) in my laundry room.

So, today I attempted to organize part of my desk, which meant also pulling out the stack of magazines that I had stacked on my stash shelf. After pulling out this stack of saved magazines I realized I needed to reduce more than just my knitting magazines. I didn't tackle all of the magazines because I hadn't purchased enough 3-ring binders or page protectors, but I did tear out the patterns from my Interweave magazines and my Family Handyman mags that I wanted to keep. I've decided to donate my Family Fun magazines to our local MOMS Club, and I will save the articles from Working Mother that I like.

As you can see, this side of my desk is in shambles. It's been this way for years. I clean my desk, but never really organize it so things just end up back the way they were rather quickly. My biggest problem is paper and keeping up with the slew of bills that need to be organized daily. In this picture you can also see binder which are no longer in use and a few that have not been in use for at least a year or more.

So, what did I do with all this stuff? I threw it all on my bed and sorted it. Even though I do have a drawer for bills, I simply sorted the ones that were laying on my desk and that were stuffed into the slots that you see, into a box that I will need to sort through later because some of the bill can seriously be thrown away. All the books I put in the bookshelf that is in my livingroom and the rest of the stuff got sorted into a box for my husband to go through.

The end result is rather nice. I even have some empty space with with to buy a few more binders to sort the other magazine 'keepers' into. I still have yet to actually put titles to my binders, but I'll work on that a little later today.