The Start of Something New

Hello, my name is Stacy and I am a magazine junkie.

I've always loved magazines, but my true addiction started a little over three years ago when my son was born. I have been an avid reader all my life - the librarian in the town where I grew up used to call me "The Human Book Vacuum". I typically would read a book or two a week, and when I was on a vacation or at the beach, I could easily devour a book every couple of days. I'm one of those people who gets so absorbed in what I'm reading that I completely tune out the rest of the world (I can just imagine my husband rolling his eyes right now and nodding his head in frustrated agreement!).

However, once Rory was born (and as you all probably know by now, he's a force to be reckoned with!), I couldn't focus on ANYTHING longer than a few minutes at a time, let alone try and read a whole book. And so my passion for magazines began. Glossy pages with a variety of interesting and relevant topics, all that can be read in five minutes or less? The perfect mini-escape for a busy mom!

I don't know about you, but I am always finding little tidbits in magazines that I read and think, "Wow, this is great useful information - I bet it will come in handy one of these days!" and so I fold the page over, promising myself that I'll remember to come back to it someday. But even with the best of intentions, I now have several stacks of magazines saved up, all with at least one or two pages folded down, if not more!

One of my new year's resolutions this year was to try and rid myself of useless clutter. I've been attacking my house with gusto, gleefully getting rid of old clothes we don't wear anymore, clearing through boxes in the garage, throwing out of papers in the office, even going so far as to take four full bags of Rory's old baby clothes - organized by size and season, mind you! - to a consignment shop. However, when it came to my stacks of magazines, with all of their folded pages peaking out at me, I just couldn't make myself get rid of them. I mean, just think of all that USEFUL INFORMATION! So USEFUL! Just waiting to be USED!!!

And so I got an idea. What if I tore out all the folded pages and put them into categories - and then created a new section of my blog to showcase all this amazingly USEFUL INFORMATION? No more stacks of magazines cluttering the nooks and crannies of my family room! And maybe, just maybe, I could feel like all this USEFUL INFORMATION would actually be getting USED!

So, to make a LOOOONG story short, I have decided to start a new area of my blog called "The Filing Cabinet". This section will include snappy headings (thought of by yours truly over the past few nights during my latest bout of insomnia) such as Worth It Web Sites, Make Your Life Easier (Tips and Tricks), The Mindful Mama (Parenting Help), and Going Green Gracefully. My hope is to essentially put the majority of this USEFUL information to the test in my own life and then let you know how it goes. If nothing else, I'm sure it will provide some entertaining blogging material! And if you also happen to test out any of these ideas or tips, I'd love to hear if it ended up being useful to you. Because in case you haven't noticed, USEFULNESS is kind of a theme here...

Here's to the start of something new!