There's one thing that continues to stump me over and over again...well, truth told,
many things stump me, but if I start that list we might just be here all day. So today I'll only focus on one; why do people (usually men) have baskets of over-flowing magazines plopped next to their toilets? I mean, I KNOW WHY, but WHY must one advertise that they spend THAT much time in THERE?? Your design tip for the day, and one you can pass on to your significant other...DON'T DO THAT! Long before my other half started working for a publishing company that produces many of our favorite magazines, I had an issue with the volume of shiny pages in our home. When I first met Joe he had piles, and I mean PILES of magazines everywhere (think episode of Hoarders kinda piles). He's a lover of cars and homes, but the stacks upon stacks of
Motor Trend and
Automobile made our place look more like a mechanics haven than a lovely home of homos. My first mistake was to secretly start tossing them week by week, because months later he asked, "have you seen the
Road & Track with that new corvette on the cover?" It was only then that I realized, like many of us do in relationships, that I had to embrace this part of him and not try to toss it into the recycle bin. As the chief designer in our home, I set out to create the perfect way to organize the massive library of magazines, but my efforts fell short as our home started to look like Barnes & Noble, sans the nobility. Ikea had (and still does sell) wonderful balsa wood magazine holders, so I began to sort by title and month (don't laugh folks, in the long winter months we have to do something)! When we moved into an old farmhouse in upstate New York I found cool, old wooden shutters and leaned them against the wall in our living room to display the most current editions (Joe thought this looked like a dentists office, but I quickly reminded him that he used to store dust bunnies and dog toys on top of his piles of dude mags). I now treat magazines like clothes; if we haven't worn it (or read it) in a year, TOSS IT! Because of my profession I've created binders of kitchen designs I love, bath designs, beautiful interiors, etc. and I'm always on the hunt for cool containers (like wine crates, old boxes, etc.) to store current editions. Like any over-flow item in your home, editing is the key here, so take a hard look at what you have, what you love and what you need and design creatively around it. And I realize some of you are thinking, "why not just download the magazines onto your tablet?' Call us crazy (and many do) but we are still old-school and love the tactile experience of touching a magazine...oh, and when our power goes out in the dead of winter, those tablets aren't much help!
