Give Things a ‘Home’ :: Magazines

Welcome to ‘Day 12’ in the month long series of articles cataloging
 Simple Organizing Solutions!  

If you’ve been reading from the beginning, you’ve hopefully already, 1) Gotten the right mindset and motivation needed to get organized.  2) Zeroed in on one small area to focus your efforts.  3) Have begun narrowing down your belongings to what what you love, use and actually have the room to store. and 4) Considered how to cut clutter at the source by giving each item a specific ‘home’ stored in groups of like items (5) & set a maintenance plan in motion. 

The key to keeping magazines under control is to give them a ‘home‘ that specifically limits the number you can have.  The space you dedicate to these materials should realistically relate to the amount of space you actually have as a whole to store them. 

The smaller the space you live in, the smaller the space you’ll have to dedicate to non-essential items like magazines. 

A great solution for small spaces is a wall-mounted unit like this:

Designate a single basket or bin to go on top of, or underneath a coffee table:

Maybe one or two magazine files to sit on top of a shelf or counter top:

Take some time to establish some realistic boundaries or limits to amount of magazines you plan to store at any given time.  This is especially important if you have subscriptions to one or even multiple magazines – it is always a guarantee that MORE are coming.  

Maybe you’ll be really strict and establish a one-in, one-out rule where when you receive a new issue, you part with the older issue.   Or, maybe you’ll decide to keep up to 3-5 total back issues.  The key is is to establish at least some kind of boundary or expectation.

Even if  you do have the space to dedicate nearly completely to magazines like this shelving unit: