I have always been obsessed with magazines. When I was a child, I loved Horizons and Cricket. As a teen I loved reading up on my favorite celeb crushes in pubs like TeenBeat and Seventeen. Today I aim for a more decidedly adult literary palette, with fashion magazines galore (my two favorites are Lucky and InStyle), Scientific Mind, The New Yorker (when I have down time to read the lengthy but always amazing articles) and yes, US Magazine (don’t judge!).
I have moved beyond the Freedom Filer system I instituted months back and gone completely digital for all magazine clippings.
Now within 15 minutes I have skimmed my magazine to my heart’s content, ripped out any pages I want to refer to again, scanned them, imported them into Evernote and can toss the paper copies. No longer must I stare at looming piles of old magazines, taunting me. In just a quick search, I’ll be able to find what I’m looking for in Evernote, thanks to its magical OCR technology. It’s a habit I want to apply to other areas of my life overrun with paper clutter. There’s just something so calming about looking at a clean desk without distractions.
How do you manage your paper clutter? Do you have any systems you’ve found useful? Unclutterer has some great guidelines for what documents to keep in paper form and which to shred that I refer to regularly. Share your own wisdom in the comments!
Kara
November 4, 2010 at 4:51 pm (14 years ago)Great idea and post. I think all the magazines filling the container on our mantle belong to me and are way outdated. 😛 BTW, regarding your mag list, I think you'd really like Vanity Fair. That's one of my favorites. 🙂
the_simplist
November 6, 2010 at 7:47 am (14 years ago)Thanks, Kara! I’ll have to check out Vanity Fair before. I feel like when I’ve read it in passing I have really enjoyed the articles. 🙂
Ron Toledo
November 5, 2010 at 4:17 pm (14 years ago)Hello Marie, Thanks this is Ron I work with Evernote. Thanks so much for sharing how you are using Evernote to digitize your paper clutter, this is a really cool use. If you are ever looking to beef up your system we have lots of cool hardware integrations with scanner companies that are tightly integrated with Evernote to add things directly to your account. http://www.evernote.com/about/trunk/ . We even have some integrations with mobile apps that will clean up snapshots pages and add them to your Evernote account. Thanks again for the support. Let me know if you have any other questions or feedback.
Dina
September 4, 2011 at 8:48 am (13 years ago)OMG I am the same way with the magazine clippings! I have put them into big binders seperated by categories. I love, love, love LUCKY! If I can ever give up the glossy paper, I will give Evernote a try!