I have a bit of a problem. I currently get two magazines delivered to my home every month - Style at Home, and Canadian House & Home. I like to flip through them to see what wonderful (and sometimes odd) things people are doing inside their homes. Now, some of you may have many more subscriptions than I, but my problem isn't the number of magazines I get, it's the number I keep. That's right, I keep them all.

Behold my bookcase - that bottom shelf is pretty much all magazines that I've kept on the off-chance that someday I may feel the need to flip though one that's two years old (or more) for decor inspiration.

As I've recently been plotting a project that will require my bookcase to be emptied, I decided to start shifting through the 3 years of decor magazines collecting dust on the bottom shelf. But, what was I going to do with them? I couldn't just recycle them - what about all the great stuff contained within their glossy pages? I could tear out the pages that I liked, but then I'd have to figure out where to store the random pages.

For the past few months I've been silently stalking Pinterest. I'd login occasionally, take a look at some things people had 'pinned', maybe save a few, and then log out. I didn't do much with it, until I decided to sort through my stack of magazines.

For those of you who aren't aware of Pinterest it's described as 'a virtual pinboard' - a way to store and save all those things you find on the web, that you might need one day. I prefer to think of it as a more visual way to store all those bookmarks you have in your internet browser, but instead of folders you have boards.

Here is what Pinterest looks like:

Pinterest starts you with a few default boards, but you can rename them, and add more depending on the items you're going to be saving.

You can also search Pinterest for images that appeal to you, and if you find something you can re-pin it to your board. I don't particularly like this function - If I find an image I like, I'd rather go to the originating website and pin-it directly, but that's simply a personal preference.

Pinterest also allows you to follow people, or you can follow individual boards, so if there's someone who's taste is similar to yours you can see what they've pinned. Here's my profile if you'd like to see what I'm pinning.

If you have a blog or website you can also see what images people have pinned from your site -  type this into your browser with your site's full url (without the www.): http://pinterest.com/source/insertyourwebsite'surlhere/

Anyways, after several hours of magazine flipping I now have a Pinterest page with 14 boards and 149 pins. I also have a bookcase that is slightly less crammed with magazines. Hopefully I'll be good and periodically purge my magazine collection. Next up is sorting all my books, and deciding which I really want to keep, and which can go to a new home.