How do you store your zines?

[Briana]

This is something I've always been curious about, how do other people store their zine collections? Mine are in a plastic bag in a drawer and I'm convinced that there's got to be a better way to do this, without taking up too much space.

[Maranda Elizabeth]

I keep my zines in shoeboxes, but I would like to one day live in a place where I can have them out on the shelves, in full view at all times, because I would find it much easier to pick something up at random and give it another read, rather than emptying all these boxes and making a mess.

And just to clarify, the reason I don't have my zines out in a visible way right now isn't because they are hidden, it's just because of space and storage options. I always live in very small places.

[Erin H]

I keep my distro zines in platic crates I got from Staples. I have them filed.

Zines for consideration are on a shelf thing on my desk.

[Aj Michel]

Right now my zine collection (of other people's zines) is crammed in five copier paper boxes (the boxes that hold 10 reams each). They aren't organized at all, just crammed in there. There's two additional boxes for my own zine stock.

Someday, when I finally get a house, I want to organize and store the collection in heavy, steel, legal-size filing cabinets, like pamphlet files at libraries. Sigh. Someday.

[Mae Undead]

I keep mine in those cardboard magazine holders and have a huge bookshelf to put them in. It sort of reminds me of a library!

[ciaraxyerra]

my apartment has this vestibule kind of thing between the hallway & the kitchen, with a window & a little windowseat thing. i keep a small-ish bookcase underneath the window, & it is PACKED to the gills with zines. i thought having them out in public like that, in a place that i walk by eight million times a day, would inspire me to pull old zines & read them more often...but mostly they just sit there. sometimes the cat comes along & nibbles at the corners until we distract her with catnip mice. i think it looks nice, anyway. gives the apartment more character than just bookshelves with books everywhere.

i keep my distro zines in milk crates stacked four by three next to my desk. in fact, here's a photo:

the angle on the photo makes it look like it's taking up a lot of space, but it's not bad. especially when you consider that we are taking about a couple thousand zines.

[Dan 10things]

Ten 25 gallon Sterolite tubs in the garage, 8 paper case boxes in the basement, 500 or so spread out on book shelves and piled around my scanner and computer, another couple hundred at work in piles on my bookshelf and desk. And they are mostly in no order... although I put nice neat stacks of all my issues of Rollerderby, Fucktooth, The Probe and Answer Me on my shelves by my computer recently.

[KellyRose-Pulse Zine]

i keep mine in shoe boxes that i collage and in my "zine binders" :)

[Kisha]

Since discovering this magazine storage crap from Ikea, I've used it ever since to store and organize my zines. they are like, $3 for a back of 5. I love 'em!

[Kate]

I used to keep my zines in a huge box, but it made it pretty hard to find anything without a lot of searching. I now have about 5 boxes- 3 boxes with zines organized alphabetically, a box for zine related items (flyers, distro catalogues etc), and a bigger box for A4 zines/diy publications. They take up one shelf of my bookcase & look cute.
I tried to order my zines in genre order too, but alphabetically works best for me, or it all gets too fiddly.

[Stephanos]

Mine were all in alphabetical order in the bottom of my wardrobe, but they fell over so currently they are unsorted in a number of bags. I like making lists; so I have everything in an excel file, which is certainly ahndy when trying to decide whethere I've already read something!

[Spurzine]

For a while, I kept all my zines in a large, brown suitcase that screams 'Barton Fink' in dull orange script, and all my copies of 'You'-zine in a barely-holding-together wicker box (which is now full). Now, though, my piles of zines are too much for them, so they just grow into towers behind my couch, along with said box 'n suitcase... oh, and on my table... and my electric piano... and my beanbag. Gonna move all the overflow to a couple of big boxes soon - my partners seem to understand about the extreme lack of people-space at the dinner table, but it looks a bit bad when I have more people over (or parents, et-set-eh-rah). I really should try and alphabetise them, though - I mean, I am a librarian after all, and I'm pretty festidious with my music collection... perhaps the aesthetic of piles of brilliant zines all over the place develop that cosy comfortable clutter that spells 'home' to me...

[ArchieNGU]

mine are just on a set of book shelves in my room, i try to keep them in alphabetical order (kinda) but havent been so bothered recently...