Organizational {Friday}

Okay, so did you spend this past week tearing apart your old scrappy magazines? Do you have a nice pile to put in your inspirational binder now? I am sure you do! Now, let’s put these books together! First, create your categories. They will be different for all of you. To give you an idea, here are my categories:

Alterables
Book of Me
Cards
Challenges
Embellish
Flowers
Journaling
Layouts
Organize
Patterns
Photography
Quotes
Ribbon
Stamps
Technique

Once you have your categories created, sort your stack into those categories. Now you are ready to put your pages into page protectors. I only put the whole magazine page in a protector if I want to keep the entire page. If there is just a small section of a page I want to keep, I cut the section out and use my glue stick to paste it onto the back of a junk piece of paper. I can get many ideas on one page a lot of times. This saves room in your binder. I also note underneath the idea which magazine it came from and the designer's name if listed. See a sample here:

If the magazine name is visible when I cut it out, I just circle it. I have two ideas I have cut out on this sheet, and I still have room for one or two more ideas on this one page.

After getting your categories created, your pages sorted and in page protectors, now just fill up that binder! You can also create a fun cover for your binder. I created one but I couldn’t add a lot of fun lumpy stuff because of the tight plastic cover. Oh well, at least it’s pink and I know what binder it is.

Now, how do you keep up with your book? Here is what I do. As I get a new magazine, I go through the previous issue that I still have on my desk. I tear the older one up and keep the new one until I get another issue. So basically, I only have one issue of each magazine at a time. This keeps me from getting a mountain of magazines again. I also have gone through my inspirational binder on occasion and tossed one or two things. I don’t toss much but sometimes I wonder what was I thinking when I decided to keep something. Ha! Anyway, have fun, ask questions, and post links to your books in the comment section. We would love to see them! Happy Organizing!