Bookmark Collector

Where do you start organizing an accumulation of hundreds (with duplicates, thousands) of bookmarks? For me, it was getting the paper bookmarks separate from the rest and putting them into some form that I can sort through.

In a previous post, I mentioned the Negative Preservers. They’re clear, with four envelopes to a page. It’s easy to put bookmarks into them and to remove them. They fit into a 3 ring binder, and after my initial disasters using them without a binder, I now keep them in a large, sturdy binder.

Well, there’s nothing that gets you started like putting on a video, sitting with a beverage (diet Coke in a large mug), and just digging in. One by one, each bookmark was slipped into a sleeve. For this initial sort, I’d put one facing each direction, so I could put a total of 8 in a page. I’d put duplicates in the same envelope, unless there were a lot of them, in which case I’d wrap up the duplicates in a zip-lock bag. One bag for each bookmark.

I would run into bookmarks that were too wide, too long, or both. For this first sort, I would slide them into the pocket of the binder cover. Duplicates of these oversized bookmarks went into larger zip-locks. Luckily, I didn’t fill all 50 pages that I’d bought, but I came very close.

I didn’t try to store the antique paper bookmarks with this sort. I kept those mixed in with all the bookmarks (metal, wood, plastic, etc).

This first sort took several evenings of work. It wasn’t very difficult, and probably took as long as it did because I was rediscovering a lot of old memories. It was quite common to uncover a bookmark I hadn’t seen in quite awhile, although I must admit there were a lot that caused me to wonder “when and where did I get this?”