An organizational tip

Before I moved into my new house I was doing some inventory of the old.  I just had to laugh at myself when I looked at my piles of quilting magazines...  How many times had I moved that pile from house to house... I had magazines from 1999!  

just a small sampling of the magazine stash. I had to break it down so it
wouldn't seem such a daunting task.

This move I decided I wasn't going to do that.  I was tired of being surrounded by clutter and I was definitely not going to bring it with me!  I think we all do that when we move anyway.. It is a perfect time to toss, giveaway and recycle what we have found we no longer  use.  I did notice as I looked at my magazines that I was getting a bit nervous.  I like to have the patterns just in case ONE DAY I will make them!  LOL.... lets be honest, for me that one day rarely gets here!   So I made a compromise with myself, I would keep only the patterns that I really thought I would make and recycled the rest of the issue. I didn't like how the patterns were written in some of the  magazines that I had subscribed to in the past so those went immediately to the recycle unless I really liked the quilt and thought it worth the effort to decipher the pattern.

I just so happened to have on hand a little 3-ring binder and page protectors.  I printed a fun little page for the front of the binder.

The next few hours I spent looking through my magazines tearing out the patterns I really wanted to keep and saying good-bye to others... I couldn't let them go without doing at least that!  LOL  

all this....

into this....

equals this!

My pile of magazines went from chaotic to controlled.  There is one pattern per page protector and the picture of the pattern is in the front so I know at a glance what it is.  Now I know that if I was completely wacko I would make a table of contents but that will take away the fun of browsing through the notebook.  I wonder how long this will sit around before I even look at it again!  LOL