Food Magazine Overload

Food magazines. Sure it's fun and exciting receiving them in the mail. Yea, I like to pick one up occasionally whilst waiting to check-out in the grocery (I'm a sucker for a good food photo). But what do you do with them afterwards? Can't throw them away. That's like throwing away a cookbook. Can't give it away. What if you need to make that Armenian version of a meatloaf - your second cousin's in-laws might come to dinner one night.

I don't know about you, but I've got Gourmet magazines dating back to 1993! And, somewhere along the line I thought it was a good idea to be subscribing to three food magazines at once- I'm embarrassed to tell you for how many years. So, of course now I've got stacks of the things. Well, I've finally come across a system for actually using them that works, is simple and I'm willing to share (if you have already been doing this at home for years - I don't want to know about it).

I went out and bought 24 inexpensive cardboard magazine holders (Container Store). Rooted around in the painting section of my basement and covered the outside of each with 2 coats of leftover latex wall paint. Stuck a label on the outside of each. Here's the clever part. You must separate your magazines, not by title, or year, but by month. Yes, stick that May 1996 Food and Wine in with the May 2004 Cooks Illustrated, the Bon Appetit from November of 2001 with the November Gourmet of the same year. And here's the part that makes it work - have a magazine rack in your kitchen, next to your favorite easy chair, or where ever you choose. Every month you take your current months magazines and place them in your magazine rack. And there they are, just waiting on you, they'll take any spare moment you can give them. Of course, at the end of the month you put them away and get out the next months.

I can't begin to tell you how well this has worked for me. Now I have access to at least 20 magazines each month. Yes, some are very outdated, but I will usually find at least one redeeming recipe to keep it from the garbage bin. Here you can see all my magazine holders, organized by month - just waiting patiently for their turn in the kitchen.