Dysfunctional Organizing

I have a confession to make of an obsession of mine...I'm obsessed with cookbooks and lifestyle magazines. There isn't a day that hasn't gone by in the last ten years that I haven't looked through either one.

I also have a really hard time letting go of magazines once I've read through them...there are usually ideas that I want to try or recipes I want to cook or places I want to visit that I have discovered within their pages.

So what's a girl to do? Well, I've created a "library" of sorts of my favorite magazines: Bon Appétit, Gourmet, Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart, Domino, etc.

Here is how I have them organized:

Rather than organize them by publication, I found that organizing by month has made a lot of sense. Each month, when I have flipped through the current issues, I'll pull out my stash of previous month's issues.

See that pic above? You can see that I have a mag holder for "November"-, "December"-issues, etc. I like this since when you look through, let's say, the "May" holder, all your recipes will have ingredients that are in season and the gardening sections will pertain to the month you are in. I also like that you can find fun crafty ideas for holidays way before their time comes. So for Christmas, I can see what great gift ideas I can use, wrapping techniques, etc.

So there's my little organizing tip for magazine freaks, such as myself!