I organize my books loosely by category; seems I can find what I am looking for much easier that way. Never did figure out a good way to organize my magazines. I bought inexpensive cardboard magazines organizers from Amazon to hold my individual patterns by category. Here are the ones I got:
http://www.amazon.com/Fellowes-Banke...dp/B00186ZA6O/
Years ago I stored my magazines in 3-ring binders with the plastic magazine holders that fit inside them. I still have them. What I don't like about this method is that the binders become quite heavy and bulky, so that I am not particularly inclined to want to take one down to look through the magazines in it. I think the boxes above would probably work better for me if I want to store by mag name and years. My problem with magazines is that often there is just one quilt that is of interest to me in any given issue, but I hate to cut up magazines. Copying the index usually doesn't work for me because I need a picture of the quilt. Still haven't figured out magazines.....