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Ask Amanda Lee: How to Store Magazines

amanda_lee — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 21:29:44 +0000

“You should do a post on how to organize magazines. I’m drowning in them.”
-Cait, Cincinnati, Ohio

If you’ve been reading for awhile, you know my feelings on paper. I have an inherent predilection for clutter, which means that I have to work extra-hard to keep it out of my space – and the best way to do this, the way that requires as few decisions as possible, means letting as little paper as possible into my home and space.

Given this anti-clutter rule, normally if I were giving advice to a friend who had a magazine addiction, I might suggest that they look at why the magazines keep coming into their home. Are you actually reading them? Do you refer back to them often, or are you just keeping them because you like having a complete set? Would you consider subscribing online? In short, is there any way to get the information without allowing them into your space at all?

However, I know Cait really well, and I’m pretty intimately acquainted with her work/personal situation. She’s a writer by profession, covering cooking, decor, gardening, organization, and holiday parties, among other things, for a pretty highly trafficked home and garden site. As such, she [along with the rest of her editorial team] frequently references old issues of home decor magazines for information on various topics – so often that getting rid of the entire collection would increase her workload and make it difficult to communicate with her teammates about which issue, which page, which editorial spread to reference.

SO. Here’s what I propose you do if you’re in Cait’s situation, where you want to organize your magazines without getting rid of the whole lot of them.

Separate the magazines into two piles. One pile will consist of the magazines you want to keep in their entirety, and the other will be the magazines you might have kept for just an article or two, but don’t need the entire book. Leave the latter for a little while; we’ll come back to it later.
Pick up some cardboard magazine files. a package of a dozen. This is where your full-issue magazines are going to go.You’ll need at least one file for every year’s worth of every title – so if you have four years of Real Simple, three of Bust and five of Sassy, you’ll need twelve magazine files. [Also, if you have any number of years' worth of Sassy, you need to get in touch with me, because clearly we were meant to be besties.] Some larger magazines, the ones whose issues run over 700 pages a month, will require more than one file per year. Make sure you get enough for your collection to expand, too.
Make them fancy! Apartment Therapy wrote a great post a couple years back about how to customize your cardboard magazine files. They used pretty hard-to-find and expensive materials like book cloth and rubber brayers, but you can probably achieve a similar result with brushes and regular fabric or sticky-backed paper with a cool print.
Sort the magazines by year and by title. You can color-code them if you’re organizationally inclined. Don’t forget to print pretty labels so you know which title/year you’re looking at. Easy enough, right?
Now go back to your pile of keeping-a-few-pages magazines. Cut out the pages you want to keep with an Xacto or a rotary cutter.You can either save the entire page by cutting along the spine, or you can cut out the text of the article itself. Do whatever you like.
Fill a three-ring binder [or four] with clear plastic page-protector sleeves.
Slip the articles into the sleeves. Each of these sleeves should hold one article. You can group them with tabbed dividers according to topic, year, publication title, or author, or you can separate them into different binders for each topic/year/author/title. Label each article neatly in case you ever have to cite it as a source.
Extra for experts: Scan the whole lot of it and upload it to Evernote or some kind of text-recognition/document management software. This can be time-consuming, but it’s well worth it. I don’t have a scanner of my own, but I hear awesome things about the a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000WJCX18?ie=UTF8&tag=amandaledotor-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000WJCX18″>ScanSnap line from Fujitsu; and I love everything about Evernote. After you’ve scanned them all, the text recognition software makes it easy to find that turkey recipe you remember from last year, all the stories on decorative shelving, or the brand of that awesome bedding set that was featured in last month’s Real Simple – immediately. After you’ve scanned every bit of every magazine, you can decide whether to keep them for aesthetics, but then you have a backup if you lose an issue.
A final general rule: You should only ever keep what you can store reasonably. If Cait’s magazine collection started creeping out of her office and into the kitchen, bedroom, living room, or dog crate, I’d probably advise her to scan the older years and get rid of them, or take them to her office where her editorial team could use them too.

How do you store your magazines? Do you have any other tips?

How to be a Thrift Monster

amanda_lee — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:45:09 +0000

I am a certified thrift monster. You can ask anyone I know. Since I’ve been focusing on getting my money in order, spending a lot on clothes has taken a backseat to spending a lot on paying off debt and saving. So I spend as little as possible and try my damndest to look amazing nonetheless, and it’s made me really, really resourceful when it comes to thrift shopping.
On Saturday, I hauled my sick ass out of bed [yes, I had the flu, and I still do - hence the dearth of posting this weekend] and accompanied my good friend Matt [who posts his kickass sci-fi writing here under a Creative Commons license - check it, kiddos, it'll rock your socks off] to procure an outfit on the cheap for an event he was attending Saturday night. Here’s everything I taught him, and how it went down.

Go often. You will not get a brand-new wardrobe of mint-condition secondhand clothing in one single trip to one single thrift shop. It’s just not going to happen. So you’ve got to go more than once. Remember, you’re getting it for cheap, so it’s going to cost you some time.

Go to lots of different stores. If you visit seventeen different thrift stores, your luck will be better than if you’d just visited one. Even better, you’ll be able to get a sense of what each store has in spades. For instance, I go to one thrift specifically to search for silk blouses from the eighties to wear under sleeveless dresses and with pencil skirts, another for mint-condition name-brand dresses, and a third for old hats and shoes. I’m more likely to visit Village Thrift on a Monday, when everything is fifty cents; if I’m shopping on a Tuesday, I’ll go to the Salvation Army close to my work, because their clothing is half-off on Tuesdays. See what I mean?

Don’t try to do a ton of shopping in one day. It is very tempting to take the above two pieces of advice and then say, “OMG! I’m going to spend all day Saturday going to all the thrift stores in the tri-state area!” After a couple of hours, your eyes will glaze over and you’ll never want to touch a piece of old fabric again. Limit yourself to a couple hours at first. And don’t forget to . . .

Take breaks often, and eat. Your blood sugar is not a joke, people. Matt and I stopped at a grocery to buy granola bars and fruit, and we wrapped up the day with a good bit of Camp Washington Chili. If we hadn’t, I doubt we’d have made it as far as we did – four shops in two hours.

Come dressed to try on stuff outside of the dressing room. Both of us failed at this. Admittedly, it’s easier for girls than for guys – when I remember to do this, I wear leggings and a tank top underneath a fitted dress and/or a jacket so I can slip into skirts and pants without too much trouble. If you’re a guy, though, there’s a good chance you’ll get arrested if you take your pants off in public, even if you’ve got some little bike shorts or whatever underneath [don't say I didn't warn you], so…sorry. Line up for the dressing room.

Bone up on your sewing/repair skills, or make friends with someone who’ll alter things for you. Matt bought two collared shirts that fit decently, but I’m going to take them in on the sides so they’re more fitted and flattering. I bought a really great cap with an enormous feather that had fallen off the side. Fixing it will take me all of ten minutes. I’ve habitually bought things with stains I knew I could get out, missing buttons, or hems that had come down. I’m also a huge fan of cropping the sleeves of silk blouses and dresses to make them more my style. However, it bears noting…

Be honest with yourself about what kinds of alterations you can handle or are willing to pay for. If adjusting the crotch depth of that awesome pair of MIA-inspired pants is out of your realm, don’t get ‘em – they’ll sit in your closet and give you a silent guilt-trip every time you see them. Cutting down a plus-size dress so it fits a petite woman isn’t for the faint of heart, or the inexperienced at pattern morphing. I used to be notoriously over-ambitious about what I could actually accomplish with my thrifted goods, and it was a hard lesson when some of them sat in my closet for months on end, waiting for me to take action on them.

Also, be honest with yourself about how flexible you can be on condition and fit. Tattered prom dresses are adorable, but how comfortable are you showing up to brunch in a dress that’s literally in shreds? Do you care if your vintage cashmere sweaters are covered with pills and dog hair? Are you fine with a shirt whose sleeves have been cropped – messily? Be honest with yourself. If you wouldn’t buy it new, it’s not acceptable in vintage.

Bring socks or stockings. On the day that you do not bring socks, you will find the most adorable pair of vintage shoes, and you will be unable to try them on without fear of all manner of fungus and funk getting all over your feet.. [Matt's way of dealing with forgotten socks was to buy the shoes in question - they were four bucks - and if they didn't fit, he planned to give them to someone that could wear them or donate them back for a tax deduction. I recommend this, but not as much as I recommend bringing socks in the first place.]

Resist the urge to buy things for their absurdity value. It is so tempting to buy a multicolored sequined dress with an asymmetrical hem and a big flounce on one shoulder or a 1970s-era plaid suit with enormous lapels and a monogram on the sleeve that reads “Killer”, but how many times will you actually wear that? Be honest with yourself. [Okay, I might wear that sequiny flounced dress every day. Do as I say, not as I do.] If you must brag to your friends about that ridiculous sweater with the coffee cup knit into the front and coffee-bean-shaped buttons up the back, take a photo.

Bargain. This may make some thrifters feel self-conscious, but I’m pretty unabashed about it. “I’m going to have to take this to a tailor to fix the hem. Can I have twenty percent off?” [Never mind that the tailor is actually myself.] It works for me about half the time. That cute feathery cap I got on Saturday that I have to fix? Totally got a couple dollars knocked off the price.

Above all, shop for quality. It’s tempting to grab armloads of cute thrifted stuff, but really how much will you wear it? Think about cost per wear, and be realistic.

Tomorrow I’ll have photos of all the cool stuff we got. I’m in the process of reinstalling Creative Suite on my cute little Hackintosh, and I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to work. I’ll figure something out.

Until then, do you have any thrifting tips to add?

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Cincinnati [and beyond!] Design, Fashion, and All Sorts of Win

amanda_lee — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 01:42:19 +0000

I went to a couple of craft fairs in the past couple months, and I wanted to share some of the goodness with you. You know you love handmade goodies, right? [All the photos below are courtesy of the vendors.]

SomeWeirdCrab makes amazing little plush toys and pillows, including some stuffed animal heads mounted like taxidermy, but way cuter.

If my dog weren’t already spoiled enough, I’d have bought him every last thing from Lyonesque – adorable dog toys shaped like meat and veggies, plus a few toys for humans too.

I’ve mentioned Abbydid before – she makes plushy little creatures, some of which are designed to hold your lip balm, your USB drive, or your cell phone. All of them, however, are huggable and sweet. [When Nick was in town last weekend, he became a proud owner of an Abbydid-created USB drive holder. D'awww.]

Steph Hagen’s Precious Pages is your one-stop shop for everything you need to decorate your walls and brighten your day.

More handmade plush thingies from Mr. Sogs – a little weirder, but no less adorbs. [Yes, it's worthy of the abbreviation.]

Chris told me he was going to get me a super-cute Ali’s Paw Print of my dog for my birthday. He’d love that. So would I.

Screen Queen had a huge array of screen-printed prints, bags, pins, and stickers that were equally creepy and pretty. Also, their business card has a dead rat on it, so of course I love them.

At Stop Traffick, your purchase is handmade by victims of human trafficking, and your purchase supports their recovery. Go get some already.

Pretty Old Things: 2.16.2010

amanda_lee — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:03:16 +0000

My former roommate was paring down her belongings before she moved out of our house and on to her new place, and she gifted me with this amazing sewing instruction manual.

It’s full of great sewing advice for beginners, all kinds of stuff on which I could use a reminder now and then.

I especially love that little fuzzy capelet and that rope-handled tote bag. Maybe you’ll see something like those in my Etsy shop in the next few months!