How I Organize My Inspiration

Gathering Inspiration: From Magazine Pages to Inspiration Binders

Before I share about where my inspiration lives, there’s something you should know about me—I’m an analog girl at heart. My calendar is paper, my book list is handwritten, and my daily plans, grocery lists, and to-dos all live on the page. There is just something about putting pen to paper that I’ll always love. It’s my love of analog that inspired me to create my own personal “curated magazine” (aka binder) of ideas. I want to flip through pages, not scroll on a screen—so all the inspiration I love lives in one place I can hold, revisit, and enjoy.

It all began in my early 20’s when I subscribed to my very first magazine. While visiting a friend— I browsed through a Country Living magazine I found on her coffee table. By the time I left her home I knew I would be adding a magazine subscription to my birthday wish list. I was newly married at the time, eager to decorate our first home, and those pages felt like a glimpse into a world of warm, cozy spaces.

For years, my routine was the same. When a new issue arrived, I would set aside my magazine until our babies were napping, make a cup of tea — iced or hot depending on the month! Then slowly pour over the pages, dog-earring the ones that inspired me. Maybe it was a photo of a living room arrangement, a charming bookshelf, a kitchen design, seasonal vignette, or a clever storage idea. Those little folded corners were my way of marking inspiration I didn’t want to forget. The trouble became remembering what magazine my idea was in, and keeping a stack of magazines! My babies are all grown now with babes of their own, but I still set aside my magazines until I have some time to relax, browse and read. And fold down the corners.

Over the last few years, I began a new system. Instead of saving the entire magazine, I started tearing out the pages and photos that truly inspired me—the rooms, ideas, and details, I could actually imagine in our home or that inspired other ideas. Recently, I took things a step further and began organizing the torn pages into categories and themes: rooms of the house, seasons, furniture, bookshelves, holidays, and other design ideas. I purchased some simple three-ring binders, pulled out some divider tabs (like these) that I had leftover from other projects, and began filing my inspiration clippings into the binders. I worked on it sporadically over a couple weeks – and changed my method a few times. I still considering a few tweaks to the system. I think more aesthetic binders like these or these would be fun to use, and definitely prettier to have sitting out. For now these binders are working great while I continue to explore ways to improve them.

Now I have my own personal and curated library of inspiration.

It’s not only magazine clippings in the binders. I find so much inspiration on Instagram and blogs, and I often screensot inspiring photos that catch my eye. Then, I simlply copy-paste-crop the images into a Word doc, print them page, and tuck it into the right spot in my binder alongside my magazine clippings. Sometimes a screenshot gets a whole page to itself, and other times it ends up as part of a little collage. One of the things I like about using binders is how simple it is to add pages. Now I have all of that inspiration—years of it—at my fingertips.

One binder is all about our home. I’ve included photos of our home interior and exterior. There is also a section of newspaper articles about our home, photos that were in the Feels Like Home book, my friend Marian Parsons took for the book, and a few magazine feature photos. In the future I’d like to include before and after photos of the remodels we’ve done in our current and past homes. The final section of the binder holds information on paint colors we have used in each room, and colors we might consider trying some day.

I am really enjoying using my binders. Easily finding inspiration I’ve collected over the years makes it so much easier than paging through stacks of magazines. Browsing through the binders feels like my own curated magazine — full rooms and ideas that once sparked a thought and still bring a sense of possibility. Inspiration has a way of growing and changing overtime – and I’m well aware that my style may change – that said, I think it will be fun to see if and how it does change. Meanwhile, it’s been rewarding to create a place where all my ideas and inspiration can live together.

If you enjoy saving inspiration too, I’d love to hear—are you a magazine clipper, a screenshot saver, or a little bit of both?