apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

you need to let go. please donate them to your local library.

I get a lot of magazines, and most of the time once I've read it, there's 2 or 3 articles I'd like to save for later. I tear out the articles I'm interested in and recycle the rest. I have three 3-ring binders that I keep them in: one for travel, one for interior design, and one for cooking. Much easier to archive my clippings , and the rest of the mag is usually mostly ads anyway.

maybe "scrapbook" a few favorite articles and images, recycle the rest.

For a few weeks, spend a few hours each week going through your magazines and pulling out photos and articles that jump out at you. Then put them in a binder as Erin suggested. You'll still have the important pieces, they'll be much more accessible, and your husband will be happy.

I too like to hold onto magazines with the mistaken impression that i will eventually need to reference them in the future. But, living in the tiny apartment my husband and I are in (and listening to my husband's constant complaints about my collection), I finally broke down, went through them, tore out what I liked, and filed the pages in a binder. Surprisingly, there really wasn't much in them that I wanted to hold onto. And the new rule is that I can only keep the last 2 months' issues on hand, so when I get a new one, the oldest gets recycled.

The three ring binder is, essentially, the best idea for keeping the parts of magazines you like.

For me, the parts I like are typically the illustrations, how-to pages (in Photoshop magazines and such) and nicely designed ads. For the illustrations and the ads, I just put them in a file box for cool/inspirational things that I want to look at later, or make into buttons.

For collected articles and pages, my idea is to actually cut them out and then perfect bind them back together as a sort of anthology. It's the magazine without all the garbage. Typically you can boil down an entire volume into one essential mag that way.

You could be super-green and just scan the mags, right?

My husband (why is it always the husbands??) was patient with my "paper trail" until we prepared to downsize from a two-bedroom apartment to a one-bedroom condo. (I see now how sad it was that the second bedroom in the old place was bascially a dumping ground for my magazines!) I agree with the other posters that you need to go through your stash, keep what you want, and toss/recycle/give away the rest. It's really liberating, and I echo Maxwell's sentiments about letting go of old ideas and letting in the new ones. Plus, magazines are really heavy, and they are no fun to move with! Good luck.

Do you read these back issues regularly? Or are they magazines that you don't page through regularly but may legitimately want to keep around for reference? If one of these is true, I don't think there's anything wrong with you. Keep 'em.

funny, i just went and picked up about 30 years worth of Architectural Record and National Geographics (via the Craigslist free section). i kinda feel like those are timeless and always amazing to read. they look good on my giant white Expedit shelf too.

maybe you could just Craigslist them and pass your mags on to someone who will enjoy 'em.

Might I suggest a couple of notebooks with those clear sleeves or a scrapbook? You don't loose the important things and you don't have to schlep everything around. An old design professor taught me this and it's a good compromise. Rip out what's inspiring to you in a design/visual way, stick a note on it if it's a specific idea you might forget (paint table same color as this dress). Glue/stick your inspirational things in one book. These can be really ambiguous. Refer to it when you need inspiration for a project.

Then there are the other things--articles, projects, gift ideas, etc. These get ripped out and put into individual sleeves and organized with a few tabs. Keep it general so it's easy. Mine are broken into current personal design projects, recipes/entertaining, and crafty projects. It's nice because it's also a good place to get sketches and little notes you make and keep them together.

The leftovers might be very welcome at a school's art department or the children's museum. More current ones at a battered women's shelter?

No one had more fashion, graphic and design magazines than me. I had a ritual to go buy them on a Saturday morning. I went cold turkey once I discovered all the great design blogs like this one. They show the same new products a lot sooner than the mags do. Now I save money, have more time on Saturdays, more room at home and I read all the blogs at work! So it's a win, win situation for me. And I'm not contributing to more waste. I even gave up my collection of "wallpaper" magazine from issue one. It cleanses the soul to let go of things like that, you truly won't miss them.

I'm right there with you. I have years and years of design mags filling up bookcases and covering coffee tables. I finally decided in March that anything before 2000 was probably out-of-date, not available anymore or not my style anymore. I chunked them into the recycling bin and boy did it feel good! Then I spent some time going through the years 2000-2004, throwing out a lot and keeping some clippings. My goal is to get down to only the current year of everything except for 2 magazines. Then I'll see if I can purge those at that point.

It was so great to reclaim the space that I really urge you to do it. Figure out for yourself a cutoff year and just get rid of all the old. It's okay, really. Your husband, like mine will be so happy to see you get rid of any of it that he will happily move a smaller pile.

I also love a good magazine and utilize the 3-ring binder with page-protector method to save the best pages with which I can not bear to part. And I keep the publications that I find to be a wholistic work of art [in other words, I can't select just a couple pages from them] in pretty magazine files. And I purge my collection every month or so. Best of luck.

Maybe you don't have the same attachment to each magazine type? Take a look at the different ones and perhaps put some in an "out" box--divide and conquer. The out box doesn't mean you have to get rid of them, but gives you an opportunity to contemplate separating from them.

I used to have a recipe collection that I schlepped with me everytime I moved. I was rarely cooking from these but had invested so much time in clipping, sorting (but mostly an unsorted mess), schlepping, that it was really hard to just let go of them. Finally, probably during a Cure (as per Maxwell's book), I decided this was ridiculous and got rid of it all and look back only with relief. I pretty much never clip recipes now and save the occasional recipe to my online delicious account. Really, everything's online now.

I have a small collection of magazines - mostly Dwell, LivingEtc, Elle Deco UK. They don't take up a lot of space and i rarely refer to anything in them, although I do occasionally. I would rather save electronic images, though, and will probably be moving towards that with my shelter magazines.

Also, since you have so many, you could use them as furniture somehow.

I dragged all my issues of Dwell around to two different states and four moves before I got rid of them -- and I had almost every issue. Now I kinda regret it.
I subscribe to the tear it out and stick it in a binder ploy. I have one for decorating and one for recipes. But I tend to get bogged down and end up with six months' worth of mags to go through. Ugh.

I'm a magazine collector, too. Every year or so I go through them and archive the stuff I want (3-ring binders organized by subject matter). As an Art Director, I always hold onto Premier Issues. If you have complete years or volumes of design magazines in your collection, it would be worth it to see what you can get on Ebay. Especially for European mags or collectible titles.

If you find a local library that might like to have them, then you could visit them whenever you want, and in the meantime, they could make other people happy, too.

Holy cow. I thought I was bad about magazines, but I have nothing on you. Honestly--how often do you look at these? If the answer is almost never, just recycle them. If you really have to, tear out what really strikes you and file or scan them.

Someone I read about keeps one year of each magazine. That's it. He gets rid of one issue and replaces it with the new one. That might be a good way for you to start.

I sympathize! I cannot bring myself to cut up or recycle MSL (although now that I read these postings, I am thinking - just thinking - of giving it a shot). The magazines are just so glossy and beautiful! I think there's nothing wrong with holding on to one or two of the magazine collections - if you really want to preserve them, store them in archival boxes and sleeves for long-term.

There's a difference between "collecting" and "hording." A collection is something you go out of your way to add to, and building the collection is part of the enjoyment – for example, people who collect stamps, art, etc.

"Hording" is when things build up because you dont want to throw them away, in spite of the fact that you're not likely to use them for anything. It's not a good thing. My wife and I just went through this with her magazines when we moved 2 months ago (9 years worth). She went through all of them and cut out what she wanted to keep, putting them in a folder in our file cabinet.

I hold on to my mags as well..they get a lot of attention. I kept them on the floor just like you then it became a pain to clean around them. I have a tall bookcase for my mags now and this solution seems to be working well. The bookcase is almost full but I made a promise to myself to make necessary adjustments monthly. Best of luck....

Words cannot express my gratitude. What you are viewing in the above pic is maybe 1/3 of her magazine collection. This woman convinced me that using paper towels was bad for the environment. I've been hauling a forest all over the country. 9 magazine subscriptions for going on 7 years now... My back thanks you all!

I wouldn't trade her for anyone :)

A design firm or design school could probably use them in their library. You could donate them.

I'm with you. It's hard to let go. I used to keep stacks of pretty house magazines around but finally culled my collection. I now only keep my Martha Stewart Living magazines since I love almost everything in them. But I tear out all the two page ads before putting them on my shelf (is this odd?).

Oh, I also keep past NYT House & Home sections. I really wish I could kick this habit, but I love all the info and find that the online version doesn't have all the photos that appear in print.

So, I have no advice for you really. If you really love them, keep them.

If you think that there really are certain kinds of things that you'll be likely to be in the market for soon, then you could write those things down. Say... Kitchen Sink Faucet, Octagonal Area Rug, King-sized headboard, and then force yourself to ONLY cut out pictures of those 3 things as you speed through all of those magazines, and ONLY put the photos that you think are really interesting of all three of those things. Then put those into 3 binders.

And THEN recycle the magazines.

I keep the pages I like in clear pocket books from Muji..... and now I have about 30 of them.

Ugh.

It's almost a full time job now, all the pulling pages out and filing them. They are quickly filling up my bookcase. Am considering scanning them instead, but I like to flick through physical copies.

I even briefly considered scanning them and then making them into several bound books using an online book printers (to reduce the space they take).... then I regained my sanity.

Personally, I can't keep up with all the new things that come in, so it's very rare that I go back to old magazine. The same with books.
This is what I'm trying to do:
Throw, give, recycle, whatever, everything that is more than two-year old. Take the habit to clip interesting article as soon as you see them (or mark them with a post-it for a future session of clipping). Mark read magazine so you don't go back to them thinking otherwise.

I'm chiming in with the rest of the crowd--when I realized it was time to get rid of 5 years worth of Martha Stewart Living, I went through all the mags with an exacto knife and took pages of pictures or recipes I liked, then organized into a 3-ring binder with plastic sheet-protectors.

Several years ago I recycled ALL my Architectural Digest, MSL, MH, Sunset. The first Cure I got rid of all my Real Simple, O, and misc. In January I got rid of 5 years of computer mags. My new project is to scan the pages of the mags I still have (Domino, Dwell, and Blueprint) and store the images in dedicated flash drives. No binders. No shelf space. No problema.

i just went through the same thing. i have a collection of a bunch of magazines for years. they were stored in boxes and in the closet.
i finally went through them and kept some that i thought were important and am giving away/recycle the rest.
i realized that i would never go back and read any of them again and they were just taking up a lot of room.

About a year and a half ago, I posted an ad on AT Classifieds-LA site offering up several years of Dwells, Wallpapers, Living Etc's, UK Elle Decorations, Italian Elle Decors for free. One lucky lurker from the AT community ended up with them. He didn't want my Met Homes or Elle Decors; so those mags went into the recycling bin... My advice: let go. Shortly after my big periodical purge, I let all of my existing magazine subscriptions lapse (about a dozen different titles). And you know what? Much like other posters on this thread, I don't miss them at all.

On a related note, I happened to see a link to a HEARTBREAKING website yesterday which makes for fascinating reading - http://www.squalorsurvivors.com/

While I do not in any way mean to imply that hanging on to a large stack of magazines measures up to the debilitating condition suffered by the people on that site, it really makes the way that stuff can become an incredible burden come alive. There is also a section on hoarding which may seem more relevant to you.

I can see that some of those are not even really design magazines, but stacks of In Style/People/US Weekly/fashion- type magazines. Great fun carbohydrate reading, but meant to be completely disposable. Scan pages that you want to keep and recycle the rest. Your home will feel much lighter - I know this from personal experience.

Thank you all for the feedback. I have already disposed of 3 magazine titles completely and am seriously considering canceling 3 of my 9 subscriptions. As for now I can't part with Vogue, Elle, Bazaar or W (I love my fashion mags), but I think my husband will be pleased with my progress . . . Thanks again-
cb

My idea would be to get the fire dept. to send someone round to give you lots of good advice on why you should get some of those mags out of your place. Plus firemen are so good looking these days.

Erin Erin Huffstetler's How To Make Magazine Storage Boxes:
http://frugalliving.about.com/od/doityourself/ht/Magazine_Boxes.htm

donate them to any place that people wait
hospital, nursing home, shelter

i bring mine to my personnel's waiting room. waiting candidates and employees take what they like- they go

I think the trick to solving this particular clutter question is to have a plan not just for the magazines you already have, but also change the way you deal with the magazines you are going to have piling up in the coming months and years.

I am currently going paperless with my home office and am a big fan of digitizing anything you feel you might want to reference but don't want to have sitting around taking up space. Why not get a Fujitsu Scansnap for around $250 and digitize your magazines. It has a document feeder and scans up to 15 pages a minute front and back (in color). Once the magazine is scanned - recycle it. Allow one box of 15 or so hardcopy issues for the really special magazines in your collection.

Magazine butlers are expensive - a scanner is basically the same price as buying the organizing materials to store all those magazines. It can be tedious but if you really don't want to part with something, scanning is a great way to keep it around but eliminate the clutter. Also, you should add a Zinio digital magazine subscription to each regular subscription you have (I do this with Met Home and Elle Decor). Use the Zinio version as an archive and recycle the paper version as soon as you have finished reading it. Once again, this is cheaper than magazine storage boxes from the Container Store and takes up no space.

There's this architect in Boston who used 4 stacks of magazines as legs to support a glass top - a coffee table! I thought it was such a cool idea because they are 'doing' something, look colorful and rather interesting, and if you need to refer back to them, you can also remove the glass and steal and replace an issue.

What would be cooler though is if someone could design a clear lucite table that had four legs fat enough to contain magazines where you could stack them within the legs and pull from them whenever you needed without the top being affected at all. I sometimes think I was meant to be a product designer. :)

Drop off big stacks at laundrymats. I hit the jackpot one day and came away with five expensive magazines at a time when I was really strapped for cash.

There's a company downtown that is making great inroads into the publising industry and archiving COMPLETE magazine series onto cd-rom ala the New Yorker series that came out last year. Let them go...if they love you, they'll come back in the form of a disc.

:)

I see the Mojo mags there. I am missing a few issues from year one. If you have any from year one I'd love to buy them. Post a response and let me know.

and no I'm not a packrat - the Mojo mags are the only magazines I collect. All the others go to the hospital reading cart my sister runs.

Actually, many design and shelter magazine now archive their past issues on their Web sites. Some titles are more complete than others, obviously, but I suspect that you could let go of all those back issues and rely on google and the Web sites.

I have a trunkload of graphic design, interior design, and architectural mags (from the 50s, and 60s) that I rescued from the garbage pile at my girlfriend's art school. I will never let them go!

They are extremely useful to me (I'm a graphic designer) and they look great on display.

If you've got the space and find them useful - keep them!

i am so relieved i'm not the only one!
i have a bookshelf dedicated to my magazines, sorted by the publication, and i do like how organized they are...

that being said, it really is time to let go (myself included). i will tackle this project soon. this is my game-plan: keep intact any magazine that is "special" (premiere editions, collectable covers); the rest will be put torn apart and chosen pages kept as mood-books (binders) for inspiration in plastic sleeves, and the rest of what's left recycled or donated. perhaps the contents of the sleeves can be scanned and kept digitally in the future....

as someone who loves fashion magazines, the justification for keeping the entire thing was always because the ads were just as beautiful, but you know, when you have every month's issue, you'll see the same ads again... that alone would cut down on the bulk!

I was lucky to have a partner who gave me a dollar for every mag I parted with (after ripping out the pages I wanted to keep... and guess what? Not so many pages!) I am now the proud owner of a Ralph Lauren Modern hurricane lantern from the windfall.

Now, to keep it in check, I make myself read last year's month when the new one arrives, before I can read the new one.

It works, and what I'm reading is still seasonally relevant. And guess what, part 2? In spite of what they lead us to believe, this year's June household advice ain't all that different from last June's...

I've been addicted to many magazine subscriptions over the years. And I've parted with many of the collections over time.

In order to part with early Martha Stewart mags, I went through one by one and tore out articles and recipes I thought I'd use (great, forgotten reading in the midst). I recycled the remains.

My husband parted with his Wallpaper collection. We found a user group on Yahoo, I can't remember the name, but it's a group where you can post that you want to give things away for free. A fellow designer felt like he hit the jackpot when he found our posting and came to pick them up the same day.

Lastly, many hospitals and homeless shelters will take magazines, which is one of the best ways to pass them on.

I get 2 magazines regularly and they would add up to unmanageable stacks pretty quickly, so I cut out things that I want to save and paste them into a sketchbook. I have saved only a few issues that had so much I wanted to keep that I would have had to cut them to shreds. So I have 2 magazine files. I keep the book, my saved issues, and any issues that I haven't yet clipped. Once the magazine boxes get full, it's time to clip, then recycle. It's amazing how little I actually decide I'd refer back to later. Often the ideas are absorbed with the initial reading and I don't need to keep the magazine to keep the idea.

cathexis: the concentration of mental energy on one particular person, idea, or object (esp. to an unhealthy degree)

Just let them go.

I've been there. Maybe you can use the New Yorker, or your favorite magazine covers, to wallpaper the bathroom.

Then just let the rest go.

I can't give it up, I reference my MSL's all the time as cookbooks, references, etc. If her website was easier to search for articles on I would get rid of them. That said, if any of you are looking to get rid of your MSLs from 2003 and earlier, let me know. I'll gladly take them off your hands.

The Yahoo group that jss is thinking of is probably freecycle: the main freecycle site will direct you to a group in your area.

My local freecycle has been used to pass along magazine collections; I think it's a great option.

the easiest way to let go is figuring out what you need.

if your worry is that there are articles you'll want to read later, buy a couple of binders. i did this. put inspiring pictures in page protectors, staple together articles to reference, tear out a few you never got around to reading. just keep it organized. i have one for decor & fashion, recipes, & entertaining. it's nice b/c you can look through your inspiration folders whenever & it feel really nice. no ads, just things that make you happy.

check out the mag's website. many of them offer online versions of articles. all of martha's stuff & real simple have pretty good sites.

i sent out an e-mail listing what mags i have & asked friends if they wanted any. it's a way to recycle & share. the rest i kept in a tiny box in my car to give away when i found opportunities. i ended up giving a bunch of domino & allure to the laundrymat. libraries may take them too.

**recently, i was able to throw away several pics from my inspiration folder b/c i had actually USED those ideas during my cure. :)

btw, have you ever tried to look through a dozen mags to find 1 recipe or picture??? it's soooo hard.

I can totally identify with your dilemma, although I've kind of turned a corner on my own magazine hording. I

In anticipation of my fourth overseas move (I lugged my mags in the previous three), I've decided to purge. I don't actually plan on taking anything with me, since the move is for a limited time, but I am relying on a friend's storage unit and don't feel right about taking up too much space, especially since she's letting me use it for free.

I currently own collections of Cooking Light, Bon Appetite, Gourmet, Real Simple and Donna Hay, and have a few other odds and ends that I like keeping. In truth, I rarely refer back to my magazines, but like having them around.

The first magazine I tackled was CL. At first I was scanning, but then I realized that nearly all of the recipes that interested me are online, so I just saved them to my computer and put the mag aside once I'd finished with it. After a while, I realized that the CL mags are SERIOUSLY unattractive. They display food in a truly unappetizing way sometimes and the quality of the paper is fairly low. Next I'll tackle my Gourmets and Bon Appetites (most of the recipes are online at epicurious.com anyway), then the odds and ends, and the rest I think I'll box and store.

Sadly, there is virtually no recycling where I live (which is clearly under a rock. Hi, Israel! You kinda suck a lot sometimes!), so I'll be forced to toss most of my discarded lot. I'll post on a few forums for English speakers and see if there are any takers, although, in a way I don't really want to offload my clutter onto someone else.

I look at the photo and fear those piles toppling over on that poor little dog!

Time to let it go. Spend a lovely rainy weekend day going through the magazines, tear out what inspires you, donate, recycle, toss the remains.

If there weren't people like you then we'd never be able to go and buy vintage vogue magazines from 1940

Some are worth keeping (Nationaol Geographic for example) - others aren't (Elle for example)

Keep anything you really love then go through the rest and keep the pages you are interested in

I do this - I have scrapbooks for fashion and interiors and keep articles or how-tos in ring binders - when moving once I had a pile nearly as big as yours and went through every single magazine page by page before I would let go of them.

I look at my scrapbooks and folders all the time - they are a record of all the things I love - no matter whether they are in fashion or not - and they are wonderful inspiration - I'd never have looked at the whole magazines but the scrapbooks are perfect!

I've just had a thought - why are these magazines defferent to books? Would we be so keen to tear up books and throw them away? Whats the difference? Is there a difference?

Just a thought...

Put them into 20 paper bags and leave at them the curb on recyling day.

Its the most freeing thing you can do.

Another option is to contact your local school and see if the art teachers would like the design mags for their students to read and/or cut up for projects.

I agree with those who say to get rid of them.

It's so freeing, just donate or curb them and never look back, you'll feel so much lighter.

I've moved many times, and learned the value of keeping only those items that I love most. When I was younger I felt that home was where you kept your stuff while you were out acquiring more stuff, but learned through multiple moves that after a while your stuff owns you instead of you owning your stuff.

I would only keep the issues that you totally and absolutely love and ebay the rest. A lot of people buy back issue collections on ebay.

For many years I have kept clippings of magazine photos that I love, and I keep them in photo albums. As my tastes have changed over the years, I've gone through them periodically and edited them to keep the collection down to a few binders.

One difference between books and magazines is that in a magazine, is that a certain amount of it is ads. It's true that ads are, in their way, "content" when you're talking about figuring out what to buy, what's in style, etc., but for instance, certain ads are repeated within several different issues of a magazine or several different magazines, even, so you're devoting kind of a lot of real estate to ads.

Whereas, if you just cull out what you feel like you think you'll need to reference again, those things you like will be easier to find the next time.

i second the scrapbooking some items you want. get rid of the instyle mags! i bet half of the content is not "instyle" anymore. or available for that matter.
to prevent in the future, i scrapbook the items i like immediately then toss the magazine. i don't do this to art magazines and the like. they are sort of like reference books.

oh, also, lighter the luggage the lighter the mind - i heard once.

Here's another tip: Many magazine sites are terrible for searching, but often do include the latest recipes, etc. for the month. So if you see a must-keep recipe or article, go to the site immediately and cut and paste it into a Word doc. I do this with all the NY Times recipes I find interesting and now have a virtual mini-cookbook I go to all the time.

For recipes specifically, even if it's not on the site just Google it; sometimes cooking sites will reprint the recipes verbatim. Obviously, this approach doesn't work as well for preserving articles with great photography, but overall it saves both space and hassle - I definitely use those recipes way more than when I had yellowing pages tacked on my fridge!

I've been ripping out pages in mine to cut down on the clutter. Now I've started scanning them in and assigning folders or keywords to help find them quickly. It's not a fast project, but MUCH more rewarding than having all that paper around.

There's a few mac-based magazine organization packages out there and I was able to only find one for windows, scanalog.

I'm finding that a lot of the articles I saved at one point aren't relevant anymore. You probably don't need to save as much as you think. Or just toss and don't look back. If you really need to find the information again, most of it is available on the internet in some fashion these days.

i have a strange attachment to my Times Literary Supplements (London not NYT). i have this (probably unfounded) belief that they will be something to pass down to my son.

strangely, neither the cats or the toddler will touch them. somehow, they know. weird.

not sure how to display as it would just be a block of paper with one cover exposed...

everything else feels disposable. i like the idea of a binder b/c I do keep whole mags when I only care about one page.

violetrose: i don't keep a lot of books around, either.

as far as fiction goes, i have a few autographed copies of a few books that i keep around simply because they're autographed. if i pick up a paperback of something (usually during travel), i usually end up giving it to a friend or throwing it out after i've read it. same goes for books i get as gifts but never read. i also don't always finish reading books in a timely manner, and tend to have a couple in progress, and a handful i haven't started. i try to keep the number of these between 5-10. other than that, i fully utilize my library card if i want to read something that's not on my shelves. that's what libraries are for.

as for nonfiction, i do occasionally buy art, illustration and design books. being a student, my budget doesn't allow me to buy a lot, so my collection is very small, very selective, and very easily moved. if and when i start making more money, i'm sure my library will also grow. but then again, so will the amount of space i will be able to afford, as well as my moving budget. just because the actual items are within my means, it doesn't mean i can afford the space to move and store it all without compromising a comfortable level of cleanliness and organization.

and about magazines: i do tend to keep them around for awhile, but they are in a 12'x12" cubby, and once the stack outgrows that space, and i can't remember if there was anything specific i wanted to refer back to, i just throw them out. i keep them around out of laziness more than anything.

Sorry, but I would never part with my mammoth collection of Dwell magazines. I have subscibed almost since issue one, and I always enjoy thumbing through old forgotten issues on a lazy afternoon or before bed. There's always something there I'd forgotten about or don't remember seeing.

I would say my gut feeling is to question yourself about why you have these and how much you enjoy them. Do you use them? I do throw out magazines that remain neglected.

Maureen said it - do you own your stuff, or does your stuff own you?

And/or is it that you somehow yearn to be owned, because it addresses a half-formed wish of some sort? As a semi-recovering magazinoholic myself -- stacks of Bust and Cottage Living -- I often wonder what is it that I'm really trying to get when I buy (and especially when I keep) certain magazines. Is it the knowledge inside them (and ptoo is right that it's largely the same from one year to the next, and others are right that it's all online anyway)? Is it the "feeling" that I too could be glamorously fashionable/ perfectly informed and in touch/ swankily decorated/ the ultimate kitchen goddess/ whatever image the given magazine is trying to sell?

And if so, how exactly will a stack of paper make that happen?

When the pile of magazines takes up as much -- or more -- space in your home than you do, maybe it's time to figure out what the need is that you're trying to answer. Can you haul your desires back from the magazines themselves and back into yourself? Can you then own and act on those desires without literary scaffolding?

I want to kiss ptoo's partner who paid a dollar a magazine - brilliant strategy! Because as I see it, it's not just about desires and hoarding, it's about money too... After a while, these magazines we buy turn out to have bought us -- square footage in our homes, precious creative real estate in our brains, and a fairly large hole in the budget.

See if you can quietly calculate what you paid to own these magazines, and add in what you have paid to move them around with you so far. Seriously, do the numbers. Even if these are subscriptions, I see several hundred dollars in cash sitting there in that picture, maybe a thousand. Maybe more.

I bet you can think of a better use for that money. The design course you secretly hanker to take. The one or two pieces of couture you would love to own. A gorgeous piece of art. A trip to somewhere to clear your mind. A donation to your fabourite charity. e-Baying the collectibles will free up some cash. Donating the rest to people who would love to drop $5 on a glossy mag but can't afford to will free up space and lighten your heart.

Then see what happens when you seek both creative inspiration and down-time solace from the world around you -- rather than the world as edited, sponsored, framed and cynically funnelled towards the demographic that you just happen to fall into...

Shoshin. Beginner's Mind. You might like it.

I feel your pain, but please FOR THE LOVE OF GOD Don't bring your mags to the library, we've got plenty, and It just means we have to take time away from our other work tyo bundle them for recycling. (The same goes for books, If you don't weant them why on earth would we?)
Have you considered borrowing mags from the library rather than buying them? At my branch we have a lot of great design magazines.


-Donation addled librarian

i can help by taking march 07 - to June 07 issues of instyle of your hands (i send them to my sis in Japan where they are muy expensive) :P

otherwise... just toss 'em.

I used to go through and find articles for keeping... and then found i had a huge pile of those that i never go through!

the only magazine i have a stack of is my ancient issues of wallpaper... and everytime i try to throw it out I feel physical pain. yikes.

I love the idea of letting the magazines go so that they can be shared by others in a library or donating them to a sidewalk bookseller, who can use them for his/her livelihood.

Sharing is a wonderful thing. So is space. So is clarity. So is living light.

If you can't bear to part with a few articles, so be it. You can certainly scan them into your computer.

I'm sending you my best wishes so that you can let go.

I'm a magazine editor, so as you can imagine, my stack is often out of control! When I moved from a 900 Sq ft one bedroom to a 750 sq ft two bedroom, I knew I had to be creative about what to let go.

My sugestions: If one particular mag reaches out to you, keep the last year- thats about 12 issues. Every other mag, take everyones advice and scrapbook, or tear out pages and put them in a box. I have one for clothing inspirations, one for furniture and home, and one for entertaining and others.

Good luck, and remember, hording is always a reflection of something below the surface too! Be free of bagagge!

Oh! Also- Craigslist the mags before you toss 'em. When I was an intern interviewing, there was always a need for back issues at whatever mag I would be seeing. I'm sure a recent grad near you would be happy to take them off your hands!

widmerpool
I have kept my World of Interiors, which I bought when I lived in Ireland,for my daughter. I have moved 8 times since the 1980's. Now she lives in Portland,Oregon and I live in SW France. I still have the WoIs. Mind you, they do furnish a room.

I'm just affirming everyone elses suggestions about clipping articles and recycling the bulk of the magazine but just wanted to add this...I too used to horde past issues of everything feeling like if I threw it out, I'd want it the day after. So I started clipping articles to save, send to friends, etc and trashing the rest and the plus side is...now instead of knowing I once saw an article on something somewhere in the huge pile, I can put my finger on it in 5 minutes.

I get a lot of design magazines...I "play cut and paste" with them...I tear out the articles/pages I like, put them in sleaves in three ring binders...I have a collection of matching binders filled with inspiration pages on a bookshelf in the living room.

I recently purchased a scanner and have begun scanning and categorizing the images, so eventually I might stop collecting the physical pages...

Then, I leave the rest of the magazine in the laundry room and the other neighbors take and read them...we don't have recycling in NOLA, so at least this way, more than one person uses them before they are discarded...