Lesson 37: Pinterest in Print (Back to School Series)

In the spirit of "Back to School", I have purged my closets. Bags of unworn clothes and dusty home items are in the car headed to Goodwill. After multiple moves and numerous spurts of redecorating, I don't have a huge emotional attachment to unused things anymore. I'm so happy to get them out the door!

But, there is one thing that I have a really difficult time just throwing away. Magazines.

I love magazines! I love looking and relooking at them! I also like having them available for guests to look at, because guests love looking at them!

Unfortunately, in my "Back to School" cleansing, I realized that my magazine hoarding had become a problem.




They were hidden here:

and here:

However, it was not until they literally fell from behind the refrigerator onto my head that I decided I needed to do something about it!

 

Condensing was a must! My magazines were no longer simply a clutter issue, but a safety hazard!

How did people in the olden days (like a year ago before Pinterest existed) catalog their decorating ideas / recipes / pictures of inspirational quotes?

I don't know about the quote thing, but my mom always had decorating folders. She had multiple ones for each room in the house, as well as a few for Christmas ideas and so on. I'm certain her mother had these as well.

With babies around, there is a danger that the folders could get knocked open creating a new kind of mess. Also, there is something about the connectedness of a magazine that I desired.

I purchased this floppy binder from Target and 100 clear plastic inserts and I began ripping!

One binder and 100 pages quickly doubled.

But, after twelve hours of dedicated work, blisters on both thumbs and forefingers from flipping pages, and an incredible mess (as my daughter and her friend took the opportunity of my half-attention to dump almost every piece of every set of toys out in every room of my house)

Seventy magazines ... 

became 2 organized binders containing 400 pages of beautiful pictures and color inspiration!

A few suggestions:

1. I over-ripped: If I thought there was any chance that I would want to look at the picture in the future, I cut and cataloged it. I can always throw it away later, but I can't get it back once its trash.

2. I used a floppy binder: The floppy binder rather than a stiff one makes it feel like I'm looking at a magazine!

3. I saved full stories: If there were certain feature pieces, and I was taken by the whole story, I simply ripped out the whole thing. There is a section of the binder devoted entirely to full stories.

4. I kept pictures of table settings and parties: This is pretty self-explanatory!

5. I am trying to sell the leftover magazine remnants for $7 on a local mommy website: The hope is that the small amount of money would help cover the supplies for the binders!

We all know that Pinterest is very fun and requires no clutter, as it is online. However, there is something so wonderful about flipping through real pages and looking at real pictures.

Personally, I love my Pinterest in print!

Or I did until the day after I had completely finished when Mark discovered another unorganized bag ...

 You have got to be kidding me!


Lesson Learned: Sometimes letting go of the one thing you want to hold onto can produce a better result than the original thing. For example, I no longer have to look at ads!