ON THE SHELF: ORGANIZING THIN BOOKS

When it comes to patterns, brochures, magazines, and booklets, we crafters can be a bit compulsive. I try to sort through and weed out, but even so, I have dozens and dozens of slender "volumes" to keep track of. I'm sure many, if not most, crafters are similarly blessed.

How to keep them all straight and accessible? Stacking those slim items is inefficient and untidy. Since they don't have readable spines, shelving them with your books doesn't work either.

A filing cabinet might be the first, most logical, choice, but that's not always an option. My solution is one I ran across years ago, in The Messies' Manual. The authors were talking about children's books, but I quickly saw a personal adaptation.

I use the big tins you can buy cookies in. They're available new, full of cookies (my favorite!), or you can find them at yard sales and thrift stores, and they are just exactly the width you need for the average magazine.

Stand them in the tins with the front pages facing the front, and put the tin on your book shelf. Now, when you want to find a particular leaflet or magazine, you can slide the tin out, and riffle through until you spot it.

I've got four of those tins so far, and use each for a different crafting category--sewing, beading, crochet, and miscellaneous. Since they are all basically an elongated octogonal shape, the front and back are narrower, which is handy for the smaller booklets, and also makes a good place to stash my crochet hooks.

Oh, and it's still a really great way to keep children's books organized, too!