I like to flick through my Martha magazine collection ever so often. I’m not looking for anything in particular I just like to get ideas and inspiration.
I realized that what I did was to pull the issues out for the month or season I was in and it was kind of cumbersome to do so when they were all in piles by year. So I got them all out of the shelves and rearranged them. Each month now has a pile. Here’s May.
So much better! I’m now happily browsing all January issues and soon February. My favorite pile is September (decorating issues) and least favorite November (it’s all a bit to brown and foody for my taste).
41 Comments
I always love January too with the organising bent.
Clever old stick ;o)
Jo xx
Where do you store the magazine piles, they take up a lot of space, don’t they?
There’s a link in the post “the shelves”.
What a fab idea! Cool way to look at the magazine to see how it has evolved from year to year.
By month/season is the best way to store magazines, I do it too. 🙂
I don’t order any magazines to home, but I do wish the local library could organize their magazines like this! I was just on december searching for Xmas magazines from there and it was so difficult.
Thanks, I missed it. That’s a nice collection you have there!
That was intererstin. I have never thought about organizing it in that way! I Marthas ideas “gångbara :)” from one year to another 🙂 ?
Smart! Om jag bara hade haft en promille av din otroliga organisationsförmåga… så hade jag också gjort så där. Med alla mina, olika, inredningstidningar. Det är väl därför jag gillar att “hänga här”, på din blogg; det är så skönt att uppleva ett välorganiserat hem… åtminstone på bild. 🙂
mvh helena
Jag dreglar lite över din Marthasamling…
Wow can’t believe you’re kept those for so long! Some since 1992!!!
I have started to organize my mags in seasons. Month piles it down even more. Thank´s for the idea!
Martha Stewart Living is the only publication I hold on to and I have the complete collection since 1990… My other mags are only kept for six months or a year at the most. I tear out my favorite pages and recycle the rest.
I have some cooking magazines I organized that way some months ago. As I try to buy and cook seasonal/local food I realized this was the way to go if I didn´t want to look through strawberry and aspargus recipies in the winter.
while i haven’t got very many of them, i like to do the same thing – i’ll collect seasons together and put them out to look through. i have martha stewart kids thrown in there too so my children get inspired (sometimes overwhelmingly so!) by those. i also don’t want to look at autumn when it’s spring so it help me keep things visually simple for myself. a little sensitive 😉
great idea, i’ll have to do this as well. i was getting all of my january and february magazines out and realized that it was becoming a hassle to pull one from each area.
That’s a good idea. I also try to cook seasonal (although I make some expections) and I am thinking now about organizing my recipe binder that way. I wish more cookbooks would do the same!
Do you find that you still get a lot of inspiration from the older issues, or do some of them seem too outdated?
The very early 90’s ones do feel a bit outdated, not for the ideas themselves so much as for the layout of the magazines.
Wow! I can’t believe you have bought them for so many years, it’s amazing. They date back to before I was born! xx
What a great idea! I currently have mine in IKEA magazine holders, but like you, I typically pull them out by month, for inspiration. Speaking of, time to go thru the February/Valentine issues…
september is always the best! january is a close second (when they sometimes have lovely pictures of organized closets). i’m not a fan of june. i like to garden but i’m rarely interested in reading about gardening.
That’s how I keep mine too, and have done so for other mags when I had more subscriptions and more mags I liked were still published. For the non-Martha, it was nice to have the month issues before the month, take what I like and then donate them on Freecycle.
For me the Martha months I don’t care fore are the June esp and any heavy on gardening. I gave gardening up about 10 yrs ago.
Greta minds think alike!
I do this as well, with cooking mags that I keep. Since I tend to want recipes that fit the season, this organizing structure just makes more sense!
what a great idea! I also like to dig up old Marthas to see what strikes inspiration. You are a clever one! My fave Martha month is March: gardening issue. Least fave might be June or July. We don’t get “real” summers here in San Francisco, and it’s almost too much to bear, seeing all the frolicking and summer cookouts sans parkas. Boy, I sound bitter 😉
Vilken fantastisk idé och härliga samlingar! Visst är det underbart med dessa tidningshögar!
lol, I just did that two days ago; dug out my old Martha mags and have been going through them for new project ideas. Jeeez, they have a LOT of ads in them though~
You have WAY more that I do “}
Wow! I thought I was the only one who did that. It’s so much better than chronologically because the whole set is together.
Dear Benita!
A happy new year to you and Wille!
I have the same thing with my Marthas. I kept them by year and they are the most often flipped through magazines in my house. Last year I sorted all my magazine collections by month so I can see through them a month in advance to get the ideas for the according season. And then there are some extra towers where there is only Christmas (but all the mags I have on that subject) and one for Easter and for Valentine.
We are currently redoing our basement and believe it or not: I always have you and Martha and Aby Garvey on my mind!
Hugs
Yvonne
What a fabulous idea! I never would have thought of that. I’m going to do it with my cooking mags too.
Oh Benita……
I am using you as my crutch. I too have about 6-7 years of Martha. I constantly waver back and forth trying to decide….keep or purge – keep or purge. I joined Freecycle months ago for the sole purpose of creating an add to donate them to some poor Martha-less individual.
But I just keep on keeping them. And now I think I can justify it just a bit longer….
Nicole
Chicago, IL
I had to smile reading your post, cause I do the exact same thing, by month, pull out what’s of interest, glue it to the pages of a thick ringed drawing notebook, and recycle the rest. The only mags I keep are the December issues of MSL. I love leafing through my inspiration book and sometimes nod but sometimes cringe at the choices I made 6 years earlier. Still great fun to see the evolving tastes and style. Yes, the limited space definitely has a lot to do with keeping the mags in check. Thanks for sharing.
A kindred spirit!
I have hundreds of Living Magazines. Infact I’m a couple issues short of a full collection!
I agree with you November Least favorite, or february all the valentines stuff isn’t super exciting!
September is great but so is January with all the organizing, except this year. What was with that? haha
anyways
so glad to see someone like me 🙂
Lots of Love
Ashli
I like the recent year’s January issues too. In the beginning they were re-hashing stuff too much in “best of’s” but since a few years I’m liking it. I just got the January 2011 issue yesterday (it takes forever for them to get to Sweden) and I have to say I really like it!
Excellent idea as always. As I know you are very kind and solve our questions, could you tell me how you get the magazines?. In martha’s web there is no place to subscribe from abroad (I live in Spain) and I would lov to do it.
Thnaks a lot
Jag har försökt hitta var jag kan prenumerera men inte lyckats… Hjälp? 😉 Och nu när jag skriver ser jag precis att någon ´mer har frågat, hihi
Trevlig helg!! kram tina
Here in Sweden we can get the magazine in various magazine shops and news agents and can subscribe via the Swedish importer. I can’t find any info on the site either but there’s a phone number for overseas subscriptions in the magazine itself: 813-979-6828. Hope it helps!
Du kan prenumerera via presstop: http://www.press-stop.se/kiosken/ sök på “martha stewart”!
That is very clever!
~Tanya from
dans-le-townhouse.blogspot.com
Been doing this for years, too! For me, it started with wanting to get to the Christmas issues quickly. It blossomed from there to the ‘gardening’ issues (no pun intended). tIOxx