When I was pregnant with my first daughter I was subscribed to a few parenting magazines. I always waited with anticipation when I knew they were due in my letter box any day – didn’t get out much haha. I loved reading them but have to admit that once I’d read them, they were placed somewhere ‘safe’ and all the amazing stories and tips were completely forgotten about. So my mission was to create something so I could easily and quickly reference the relevant information for a certain topic.
So here is how to create your own Pregnancy ‘go to’ folder
What you will need:
-Spiral Folder (or something to that effect)
-Dividers (I used 9 dividers)
-Tape, paper hole protectors or plastic pockets
- Scissors
-Pens
-Coloured paper or coloured stick-it notes
Steps:
1. Using a biro give each of your dividers a title (Mine were Pregnancy/birth, babies 0-2yrs, toddler 2-4yrs, mum/family, eating, tips/tricks, sleeping, things to do, behaviour and learn to…) by writing on the tab of each divider. If this doesn’t stand out enough for easy reading you can write on a piece of plain white paper and stick that to the tab of the divider instead.
2. When buying or being gifted any magazine, carefully tear out any pages with information you want to keep (Tip: even if the selected text/picture you want is only small still tear out whole page as its easier to file, or alternatively cut selected piece out and paste to a plain white piece of paper and file that instead).
3. Cut a straight line down the torn side of the page to make it a bit tidier – use a ruler if like me you tend to not cut in the straightest of lines 
4.  To make sure the pages or holes don’t rip after time of being turned or pulled often, I cello taped the entire length of the page on both sides and then hole punched within the tape therefore stopping any ripping occurring to the whole torn side of the page. Obviously, to save time, you could purchase the hole protectors and just stick these on. Another way to do this would be to use plastic pockets and just pop the articles in the pocket and then file them.
5.File in the respective dividers
6. I then created my own ‘contents page’ using coloured paper and stick it notes. Each divider was split into categories- for example: labour, fertility etc and was given a coloured stick it note, this same colour note was also stuck on the contents page and showing what each coloured represented.
Yes, this did take a fair amount of time but can definitely be achieved by just doing bits at time – even just pulling out the pages you want and putting them away until you have time to file. It is very inexpensive but so helpful to have on hand at all times as opposed to flicking through magazines – I also have an A-Z of emergency measures in the front
I’d love to hear your ideas for saving tips and tricks- what do you do to keep things filed?
