I've come up with what I think is a very effective way of cataloging for quick reference, articles of interest from all the many magazines I subscribe to as well as those I buy from the grocery store and Home Depot while I'm waiting in line.
As I peruse a magazine, I carefully tear out any pages of interest; i.e.,
a resource for a certain type of plant, recipe, gardening idea, craft project, etc. If the page's edge is jagged, I trim with a scissor or a paper cutter.
All you need now is a 3-ring binder, sheet protectors and self-adhesive page tabs. Simply slip the pages into a sheet protector, front to back, until you've transferred all the pages. I then arrange the pages in a particular order that pleases me, attempting to keep like subjects together. I find that partitioning the pages by category helps even further (e.g., Birds, Gardening, Crafts, etc.) Once I've accomplished this, I take a Post-it tab, write the subject and give it a indexing convention. For example if an article on African Violets is first under Gardening, I write: African Violets, G1 (G=Gardening, 1=Page 1). If my first page under Birding is an article about Hummingbirds, I would assign it an indexing convention of B1 (B=Birds, 1=Page 1) and the 2nd article about Orioles would be: Orioles: B2 and so on. Once this task is complete, I create a blank Index Page in MS Word that I can populate by hand, punch 3 holes and insert it in front of the notebook. You can design your index whatever way most effectively suits your needs. I have only 2 columns: Subject and Index ID. I printed an 8x10 of a favorite photo I took and slipped that in the top of the binder to give it a more personal touch and some pizazz. Voila! Every article you care about is now in one easily accessible location and easy breezy to locate. :)
Hope you enjoyed this post and found it useful!
--barbara
