Recently a good friend of mine asked me to help her with some healthy lunch ideas. You know – easy and healthy options she could pack and bring to work without a ton of hassle. List most of you, she works long hours in a stressful environment and rarely has time to go out and enjoy a leisurely meal. If she doesn’t plan ahead she either starves all day or grazes throughout and still does not feel satisfied or nourished by her food choices. So, off to my files I went.

Before I make a segway to my “files” – I did answer my friends question in detail. Part of what I sent to her is included here. A pdf version of some magazine articles I routinely save. They are from Women’s Health. The magazine does a monthly (I think its monthly) series called “Your Flat Belly Day” that I think is great. It’s a day’s worth of healthy and easy meal suggestions. I think the food ideas are really great (Nutritious, easy and appealing) and I love the format of the page and find it really fun to look at. I’m sure many of you will recognize these pages. I like them so much I save them for myself and for reference on occasions just like the one I described above.
I’m attaching here a Pdf of several months worth of columns in case you want to take a glance.

Flat Belly Days Menu Ideas

Now… on to that Segway…

You see, I have this “tear and save” thing I do. When I see an article in a magazine that I really like, want to read later, or perhaps save for future reference I tear it out and save it in my files. Files would be a term I use loosely since my method of organizing and saving is actually not very organized at all. Generally, I keep a small file folder going at all times. This is nice for me because when we travel I take my small file on the plane and can catch up on reading all the things I saved. It makes wise use of my time and eliminates me from schlepping around a bunch of big, heavy magazines. You see I’ve already gone through the magazines and ripped out anything of real interest to me – then recycled the magazines by passing them along to friends or coworkers. (If they are reading now they know why sometimes pages are missing!) ☺
Then, every 3 months or so – I go back through the file and purge anything I’ve lost interest in and categorize and file into my bigger binders anything I definitely want to save long term. A while back I started trying to scan these items in rather than save them in hard copy format but, truthfully, I like to look at the paper. I find it very relaxing to peruse my files. Somehow, viewing them on my computer just isn’t very fulfilling? Anyone else feel that way?

My bigger binders are generally sorted by tabs as you can see from some of the photos I’ve included. I like tabs for food/recipes, shopping (things I want!), travel, entertaining, gardening, healthy living, etc. Actually – the binders serve as sort of my pinterest boards long before I actually started using pinterest. Thing is – they don’t stay updated/organized all the time. And they get BIG because I “tear and save” so much!

I hate to throw all these little saved treasures away. But I highly doubt I will be scanning them all in anytime soon either. So – what to do? I guess I need to go back through and organize it all again and then moving forward scan stuff in so that at least I’m not adding to my outdated paper system. Or, if I ultimately determine that scanning is just not something I’m drawn to, find a way to carry on with my binders in a more regular fashion.

I have seen lots of organizers and systems out there for corralling this type of information. Perhaps I should search around a bit for better solution? I’d love to hear any ideas for how you all handle this type of information overload. Please share!