Organizing Magazine Collections

Have you ever noticed how easily a magazine can get ruined when it isn't taken care of? It seems like the cover is almost guaranteed to come off within the first week without the proper care being taken. One way that you can lengthen the life of your magazines is by taking a little time to organize them. You will be surprised at how easy organizing magazine collections really is. All you need to do is take a little time, and make a little effort, and you can have a perfectly organized, and beautifully displayed, magazine collection. Here's how you do it.

1. Get everything together. Go through your entire house, and gather together every magazine that you have. Get them all together in one location, after all it is going to be more difficult to organize your magazines if you don't have your entire collection in one spot. As you get them magazines together, begin to separate them according to genre, title, and publication date.
2. Create a system. Create a system that you will use to determine what you keep and what you don't. Some people use what they call the "one year rule" which means that any magazine that is older than one year, they get rid of. However, I personally use a two year variant, with another slight twist. That twist is that with any magazine that is older than two years, I keep the articles that I like. I simply cut them out, and store them in an "archives" binder.
3. Save the ones you want to keep. Place the magazines that you decided to keep into their own three ring binders. You should be able to fit all of the issues of a monthly periodical into a single three ring binder with no problem. Just be sure that you label the outside of the binder so that you know which binder is for what year and title.
4. Organize the magazines. Place your newly organized magazine collection onto a bookshelf for easy access. You can organize the magazines according to your personal preferences, but I typically organize them chronologically by title.
5. Display current magazines. Always keep your current issue on display, but have that display location be in just one place. For example, you can display the current issues of your magazine on your coffee table, or even in a magazine rack if you wish. Just remember to store the older issue when the new one comes out. If you don't, then your organized magazine collection will become a huge mess again.