Organizing and Storing Art Magazines

How many of you have tons of art magazines stacked all around the place or in boxes, and you don't have any idea what to do with them or how to store them? You don't want to throw them out or give them away because they have great articles, demos, tutorials, and pictures that are incredibly inspiring. So, what do you do?

I struggled with this question for years, but I finally figured it out. I got some of those plastic stackable milk crates (the long kind that are about 12" x 12" x 17"). I have a lot of magazines of many different titles, so I needed at least five crates. I divided up all the magazines by title, then put them in order by date. I put the heaviest ones in the crates on the bottom such as International Artist, Art Collector and Western Collector. However, as I feared, magazines are so heavy, you cannot stack the crates directly on top of one another or the crates will collapse. As you can see in the photo above, the crates have warped and started to collapse. That was before I came up with the idea of putting wood in between the crates to add support.

However, what I really want to do now is build a six-cube case so I can fit six crates inside (one crate per cube), and then I don't have to worry about the weight of the magazines. My friend, who built my custom closet shelves for my studio, is going to help me build it. In the meantime, this method is working beautifully.  The wood is adding just enough support to keep the weight evenly distributed across the crates and helping them not to collapse.

Now, if I need to go looking for a particular title, or specific magazine, it is at my fingertips. No more cramming the magazines into boxes (have you ever lifted a box full of magazines?) and having to go through the entire box before finding the one I want - right at the bottom of the box. I am so happy with this method, and it looks so much neater in my studio than magazines (or boxes) everywhere.  Try it, you'll like it!