apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I have one of those upright magazine boxes. My rule is that I cannot keep any more magazines than what will fit in the box. Everything else goes in the recycling bin. This rule came after a boyfriend discovered that the space under my bed was full of a couple years' worth of _Glamour_ and, to my embarrassment, _Cosmo_.

I,too, had all the Dominoes, but when I moved into a teeny, tiny apartment, I didn't have room to keep them all. I also had Dwell, Architectural Digest and Metropolis.
I posted on Craigslist to give them all away and had like 10 people email for them! So I guess I kind of recycled them!

I just tear out the pages that I want to keep as inspiration, then recycle the rest of the magazine. I already have too much stuff to store as it is.

I have a stack of Seventeen magazines from when I was 12. Lots of fun to look at now. Annie Hall style for back to school, roller skates, satin jackets with white piping, Bonne Bell lip gloss and Love's Baby Soft perfume ads. They are like an instant time machine. I plan to hang onto these, but I do keep them in storage.

I also have about four years' worth of Bon Appetit which sit on the shelves in my home office. I have tried to get rid of them numerous times thinking that I somehow SHOULD. But it turns out I really don't want to get rid of them. And I do use them quite frequently. They are organized by season, rather than by year, and if I'm planning a dinner party in the fall, I pull out the fall issues and plan my menu. I did, however, stop my subscription. Four years' worth of magazines takes up enough shelf space as it is.

I use to keep magazines ones like Abitare, Domus, and many European home decor which I had used for inspiration on projects in the past. I no longer keep a magazine for more than a couple months and buy very few these days.

I have a bunch of magazine bins that I should list on craigslist to give away.

I keep shelter magazines. To throw them out would be like throwing out a design book, and I do refer to them on a regular basis.

But magazines that are primarily reading material -- New Yorker, NY Review of Books, Economist -- go in the recycling as soon as we're done with them.

I have a whole stack of shelter magazines--they are piled high next to the book shelves in the bedroom. I got several of the cardboard magazine files to store them in, once I "went through them." The magazine files are only partially full and it's been quite a while. I'll get there.

I actually like the way they show magazine stacks in people's homes in the shelter mags, but I think I'd be better off with the space and less clutter. I am heading towards allotting a certain amount of space for magazine storage and not allowing any more than that.

I'm dating myself, but I remember when that issue of Seventeen landed in my mailbox.

It really depends on how much room you have and how much you'll really revert back to them for inspiration. Sometimes things sound good in theory but don't work in real life...

http://www.gettogethablog.com

Each time I have moved, any magazine collection I have amassed has gotten the heave-ho. Now, if there is an article or photo I really like, I cut it out and put it in a file.

I have whittled my stored magazines to just CREEMs I had in high school I can't bear to part with. I just have one copy paper box full

Before recycling vintage magazines, check on ebay, you might be able to sell them, FYI

I am with Home Body. I'll amass but then eventually heave to the ho. I use clip files constantly but would think of discarding those because they represent what inspires me. Gots to stay close to the muse.

i have some old Better HOmes and Gardens that we found when we were cleaning out my grandmom's house years ago. i just can't bring myself to toss the last one from her subscription that came a couple of months after she died. it still has the mailing label on it.

on a lighter note, we also found some Right On magazines from the 80s when Purple Rain was in full force.
And just a couple of months ago i was reading the letters in a 1963 Better Homes where the reader was complaining about the incessant coverage of the Kennedy family, Jackie's clothing and hairstyle, their adorable children and their influence on American popular culture.

I keep every September Issue of Vogue. I hope one day my daughter will appreciate them!

ditto, greenish. have all my Seventeens from junior high/high school. that's where my magazine obsession must have begun. I have all the Dominos (though by no means in great condition, I do tear through them earmarking and circling like crazy), and used to have several years' worth of Country Living until my husband made me ditch them. still managed to hang onto a sizable number of Cottage Livings, House Beautifuls and old Elle Decors.

Love of the idea of sorting food mags by season!

I have a few older Sunsets, about a handful from the 60's and a couple or so from either the 70's or 80's, about 4 or 5 Consumer Reports from 1954-1962 range dealing w/ electronics and such and those I keep for historical note on turntables, TV's and such and a few older shelter mags for inspiration and may eventually just cull the images digitally for my inspiration folder.

Outside of that, I don't keep mags for too long after I've read them.

I tend to keep them for a while and then decide to do a little Spring cleaning and start tearing out pages. I would like to own a nice large bookshelf and keep Dwell and Ready Made - I like the look of lots of thin magazines, white with splashes of color all stacked/catalogued together.

Oh yeah, I have every issue of Dominio as well and felt the same exact way when I heard they folded. Also - I have a few of my mom's old Ebony magazines from the 70's, which just popped up a few years back that were in a box in an attic. When friends come over they love to look at them. I highly reccomend at least keeping favorite issues of fashion mags. They are fun to look back at!

I've always had a hard time getting rid of magazines. With ones I could let go, I'd rip out pages I wanted to keep and put them in a file. Recently I've started scanning the pages onto my computer, so I could get rid of my paper files. It takes awhile, but it gives me more space and they are much easier to access.

Magazines not so much, but I love vintage home decor books. I have many from Sunset and Better Homes & Gardens from the 50s and 60s

I regret tossing my issues of Sassy magazine.

Since one of my favorite magazines, Country Home, went under, I've kept the ones I had left. Generally, I keep magazines for a year...then go through them and review each one. If it's an especially good issue for me, I keep it. Otherwise, I recycle them.

I have a full set of ReadyMade. I just can't bear to tear them up, the projects are so good. Most magazines I'll just save favorite articles though.

i review accumulated magazines every 3 months and rip out anything for reference then recycle. if a design magazine has a lot of particularly inspirational pics, i might keep a whole issue.

the only ones i don't throw out are Threads (and i reference my old issues a LOT) and La Cucina Italiana (also a constant reference).

To those (like me) who are nostalgic for their old issues of Seventeen magazine............DO NOT look at a current issue. That magazine is so horrible now. You will cry.

I learned SO MUCH from Seventeen when I was a pre-teen and teenager.

I haven't kept my old magazines, but reading these comments makes me wish I still had a few of them.

greenish, I am reminded of my Love's Baby Soft spray (Soft'll get 'em every time) and my giant peach-flavor lip-smacker. I remember getting carsick because I couldn't wait to read the new Seventeen issue until I got home (riding in the back seat, of course - this was way before I could drive).

And ec05, when one of my creems was confiscated in algebra class I had to explain to my teacher that I had every single copy saved and it would be as if he'd kept a National Geographic! (He gave it back at the end of the term.)

Maybe I'll tuck away a few special issues of my current magazines - and I'll definitely hang on to the handful of Dominos that didn't end up in the waiting room at work.

I keep Dwell and Atomic Ranch, and I occasionally buy old Better Homes and Gardens and House Beautiful from the fifties and sixties, for, um, reference (but really because I can't help myself). I dumped a few years of Bust a while back in a moving-related purge and have regretted it since.

I keep Martha Stewart Weddings & Living, Elle Decor, and Architectural Digest. Everything else gets clipped and filed then tossed and recycled. I only keep the ones listed above because I would just end up clipping half the magazine and it would be pointless. That said, the clipping process takes a while so we have a significant magazine backlog in our storage, but I'll get to it eventually. =) The clippings take space to store but not nearly as much as the magazines would!

My church has a relationship/partnership with a hospital on the south-side of Chicago that primarily serves low-income individuals. They are always thankful for magazine donations, to place in waiting areas or to give to those hospitalized, to pass the time. I also remember, as a kid, being a "candy striper" in our local hospital, and one of my jobs was to push the magazine/book cart around to each patient's room. I would strongly suggest putting old magazines on craigslist to recycle/re-use them, or call your local shelter, nursing home, etc. to see about donating them.