I never keep magazines for more than a day. I, immediately, tear out pages of inspiration or recipes and immediately put them in plastic sheet protectors and put them in 3-ring binders...one for recipes and one for house/garden ideas.

am in the process of typing all of the recipes I like from my cooking magazine, then donating the magazines to the local library. Lots of people benefit and I still get the recipe I like without the clutter.

I too am a magazine addict and hoarder. I have shelves full, stacks on tables, ottomans, under my bed, etc. My husband hates it, but I'm a graphic artist and really love the printed pages of good design found in magazines. I go through them, weeding out 5-10 issues every month or so, always saying I'll keep at it until I only have maybe 2 or 3 back years' worth, but it hasn't happened. And I've been like this for over 15 years and several moves. I will suggest marking with a flag or in ink whatever it is you liked that made you rip out a page and keep it-otherwise I'll forget it. I measured my stash a month ago and it's 16 feet long, in case I could ever gather them all in one bookcase. That's not too bad, right? oh well...

Things start getting ridiculous every 6 months or so, and then it's time to sort and recycle. I keep design-related magazines for two years (by then I've revisited each of them several times and ripped out pages to file). National Geographic and Smithsonian -- pretty much forever. They're like classic novels, they never get old.

My mother and I have a running joke about magazine hoarding -- creative things to do with old magazines, i.e. furniture, building foundations, ship's ballast.

I cut out things that are pretty or inspiring and they go in a folder or onto a collage, and the rest of the magazine goes into a pile that I'll eventually haul to the recycling center.

I scan and toss. Not really that much I hang on to in physical form. I hate clutter.

I'm actually in the middle of doing this right now. I don't really think of myself as a magazine hoarder (I can contain all the back issues in 2 or 3 linear feet), and I always felt the ones I'd held on to were OK since I'd go back to them periodically. Well, I started with one magazine, went through three years' worth of back issues and found only a handful of articles or pictures that still appealed to me. Then I did a different mag. After nearly 10 years of back issues (fortunately this one came out only 6x/year), I culled it to a stack maybe 1/2" high. Anything older than 2010 went in the recycling bin. More recent issues are being donated. I also donated 10 (yes 10) years worth of Ranger Rick mags to a teacher at my son's school.
I bet if you sit down and actually go through older magazines, you'll find very little you really want to refer to again. Plus there are tons of ideas online.
I'm glad I got rid of so much and will get rid of more. Just so tired of the clutter!

Love magazines!
I tear out as well, have a 3 drawer cabinet from Micheals craft store , 1 for travel, 1 for home ideas and 1 for the dog.
I give my magazines to friends to enjoy.

I get a couple of mags in my field that are really useful, and I always seem to wish I had the one I tossed. But toss I do. I rip out what I think I'll really use and recycle the rest. Now I've got to purge the clips! There's something about physically dealing with an item that makes it memorable in a way that online info is not.

I used to keep every home design mag I subscribed to, but I've slowly whittled it down to Dominos and a few issues of Cottage Living only. I've scanned or taken pictures of a few things, but for the most part they were all recycled. I also recycled my folder of clippings that I never looked at. Can't say that I've missed any of them.

I don't do magazines any more, but do regret tossing an entire Sassy archive from 1990 until 93 (or whenever it was they changed management) during a cleaning fit in my early 20s.

I drop them off a local doctor's office.

We have at least a dozen subscriptions and I fret over this all the time. So far, the magazines fall into 3 tiers.

Tier 1: Read/skim and recycle within 2 months (e.g. Lucky, T&C, Smithsonian)
Tier 2: Keep current year (Real Simple, Elle Decor)
Tier 3: Find place in the attic to store (AD, some motorcycle mags...)

I was fortunate to hold on to some of my Domino magazines. I purged a lot of old Victoria magazines when we moved, not knowing there was a secondary market for them at the time. I kept an issue of Trad. Home for 5 years because it had a color scheme I wanted to use and I knew that my husband was going to question why I wanted to paint a room Benjamin Moore "Stone" and I'm not organized enough to tear the one section out without the pages becoming lost in a file somewhere.

I haven't decided what to do with the Interior Design issues - which are really good... ditto with Luxe, but it's a quarterly publication... Garden Design doesn't take up much room so I put older issues in the guest room...

Now that I've had 10+ years of hoarding/purging, I will say I've found that the pages I've kept in regard to home design I didn't like as much about 8-10 years later. Or I've found better versions or the colors aren't as nice as I recall. So I've had to purge those too.

I'm going to try scanning my pages, that will at least help with the organizing and get rid of some file folders!

I'm a fan of healthy purging. We have a place in town called periodicals paradise where we used to take our magazines or we give them to friends or leave them in stacks places... It's hard to throw away interesting images or articles but giving it away seems to make the whole ordeal easier.

houseofthebonestorm.blogspot.com

To try and stave off the hoarding, I make it a point to pass my magazines on to someone else as soon as I finish them. Read through this month's fashion mag? Hand it to my mom. Finished with the new interior design mag? Hand it to my friend. Read through this week's news mag? Pass it on to my boyfriend or leave it in the conference room at work.

I may not be able to look back at a certain article, but I someone else gets to enjoy it as much as me and I don't have to worry about where it ends up!

I cherry pick and keep the best few issues because, like Dwell, they sometimes go away or because it particularly inspires me. If I scan it, I am much less likely to go back to it.

I'm a collage artist so I use a lot of magazines for my artwork. When I find that I'm drowning in mile high stacks, I go through them all one last time, cut out images I feel I'll use, put them in a folder, and recycle the rest! So, I recommend a little folder or binder for the interesting bits and just get the purge over with. This just makes room for new better things.

Look if you can find a PDF or comic book format (CBZ/CBR) version, either as legal or illegal download. If not successful, take the magazine apart and scan the wanted pages.

I kept every issue of Domino, Cookie, readyMade and Blueprint. They are in labeled magazine files on the very top of the bookcase where they stay out of the way, yet within easy reach when I need nostalgia/inspiration. We do keep a lot of Dwell, Martha Stewert, and Elle Decor, too, but occasionally go through them to rip out and purge. I store my ripped-out pages in a binder that goes back to when I moved into my first apartment w/o roommates and got to decorate from scratch. It's so fun to see what appealed to me then, and how some of my tastes haven't changed at all.

It is a process, I have kept all of my Dominoes and Cottage Livings and recycled tons of others, I just like looking at them.

I tear out recipes and pretty pages I'll want to look at or use for craft projects later. Otherwise they are recycled or passed on to coworkers.

The only magazines I've kept are an issue of JUMP from the 1990s (my oldtime favorite teen magazine) and a handful of Radar issues before that magazine got purchased by someone and turned from a clever pop culture print magazine into a gossipy TMZ duplicate. I might have an issue or two of Los Angeles magazine too.

I'm cutting back on my subscriptions as I went a little too gung-ho for a bunch of $5 groupon type subscription deals. I figure if reading the dozen magazines I get a month is a chore, then something is wrong, no matter how much I love that medium. (Also, the Economist is super great, but getting through an issue a week is tough on busy weeks.)

I'm a magazine hoarder too. Drives my husband nuts.

What's really fascinating is coming upon an intact magazine from the early '70s or '80s... was a treasure!

I used to just pull pages and file them, but I regret that now. My file box got lost in one of our many moves... I didn't have them in binders -- too many pages, too few binders.

There are some magazines I will never butcher that way.

It's really tough; I go back to old magazines over and over; I've had a design magazine addiction since I was 5, and someone gave my mother their old issues of Maison Francaise and House Beautiful.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only hoarder!!

The ones I will never butcher: Wondertime, Martha Stewart, Domino, Living Etc...

Making collage is an excellent ... excuse to keep them under the bed until forever.

This post really hits home for me! I don't know how many times I've had to defend my massive piles of Vogue and Elle magazines to my husband. Over the years, I've tried to condense them down to the ones of quality. It took me hours to go through them since I would end up getting lost reminiscing in past issues, which would only set me back to hanging on to them all over again.

I suggest keeping the ones that really hold some kind of significance to you. For example, I keep the ones that I think have the best photo shoots. I sometimes slice my favorite pages out and frame them!

Ok, so I tried ripping out pages, collecting them in a binder, then recycling. Didn't work for me as my love of books extends to mags (yup, i'm one of 'those people' - ripping out a page was the equivalent of ripping out a piece of my heart). My philosophy is now scan, save & drop. If my library isn't interested, I *drop* issues when I visit various locations...be it the dr's ofc or the reception area of a client. This includes old issues, and I mean really old isues. I figure, if it doesn't provide inspiration, then at least it will provide relief-and maybe a chuckle-to someone's boredom while they're waiting....

...plus, it relieaves me of unnecessary clutter. All good.

*relieves*

I still have all of my Budget Living, Domino, and BluePrint magazines. Domino and Budget Living both had books so if I ever have to get rid of the magazines I'd still have most of the good stuff. I wish BluePrint would release a book.

I used to have loads of magazines...Domino, Budget Living and Blue Print, but have since given them away when I moved, back in January. Now I feel lighter without them. To be honest, I thought about it and realized that I didn't refer to them very often, so it was time for them to go.

Magazines like Wired or Dwell I read cover to cover and then toss or give to a friend. I should drop them in waiting rooms more often. My allergist's office seems to have a particularly stale collection, so my fellow patients might appreciate a fresh issue or two.

Magazines for my particular craft pursuit I do keep as reference materials. There is even a market for back issues of these magazines as they have so much great info.

My forever list is short: Fine Gardening. I go back to them all the time. I like to keep a couple Nature Conservancy issues as an exemplar of print design--that magazine is friggin' beautiful. I donate most of my shelter mags to our library.

Thanks to our library's free magazines exchange, I can read/keep/donate weekly mags like The New Yorker without the burden of keeping up with a 52-issue subscription!

The magazines that I no longer want are turned into envelopes at my place. They're always well received and have won a few competitions for me too.

My Donna Hay's are kept in tact, on the shelf with the rest of my recipe books. This is mostly because even if the meal isn't something I personally would eat, they show great food styling or it's something I know I could serve to family or friends.
I tend to slice and dice my Frankie, Yen and Russh pretty speedily, as they have often got great art pieces in them that I put into little paper frames I picked up at Ikea and rotate them on my bookshelves. I have a box where I keep the other frames not in use. Fashion magazines - my mother and I are in purge mode for our old Vogues etc.
The other magazines I will never throw away? The boxes of Life magazines from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s that my Grandad hoarded. Some time ago, when decorating a restaurant, we sought out Coca-Cola adverts, had them professionally scanned and printed and framed. They looked perfect in the restaurant!

Keep! and Toss!...I keep many of my magazines, which drives me boyfriend crazy. He does call me a magazine 'hoarder' sometimes. I tend to hold onto my favorites or any 'expensive' magazine I consider a collectible, stashing them in various places (a closed wicker basket, a large hat box, magazine file-holders from Ikea). Other times I just tear out my favorite pages and save them in 1 of 2 binders that I have full of page-protected magazine tears.

I've kept a few isolated issues, ones that I find a ton of inspiration in (a few issues of Domino, Donna Hay, Martha for a holiday or two, O for a dedicated issue topic, Fine Gardening), but the only full-magazine-collection I keep is the vintage Victoria. Every month I pull out a few to re-read because there was something stunningly beautiful about Toshi's photography - and - the utter absence of modern day worry on the pages that still fascinates me. I still get so much inspiration from them that it was worth rebuilding my collection when my original collection was lost to an error made by a moving company. Otherwise, if I find inspiration in a magazine, I scan but then donate to a local senior center or recycle.

Eventually I give my design magazines away. Economist and Time....recycled, eventually the digital versions will take over.

Like Talby, I'm still kicking myself for throwing out a pile of Sassy right before a cross-country move. I pitch some things I subscribe to, but always past BUST along to a friend. It's the ghost of those Sassys haunting me.

If you do decide to get rid of magazines, consider giving them away on Freecycle rather than putting them straight in the recycling. I was just given 12 back-issues of Selvedge by another Freecycler, and I'm so pleased with them. I couldn't have afforded to buy those magazines myself.

i've been using the same method since i was 12! i tear out the pages i like and put them in clear plastic sheets in 3-ring binders. over the years i've developed themed binders - recipes, interior design, crafts, etc. it cuts back on how much i keep around the house, but keeps me from ever missing *that* great piece a flipped through all those years ago. and amazingly, i actually do go back and reference stuff from that long ago!

I have a big sketchbook of home design ideas and clothing ideas. I tear out the pictures and glue them into the sketchbook. Then I take the magazines to the high school where I work - the art students use them to make collages, so the teacher ALWAYS needs more magazines.

I decided one day to get rid of my mag collection. Then the economy dropped and they stopped printing my fav mags. I regret it. I now surf eBay for old mags that I once owned. I miss my mags.

I finally resolved this week to pare down my magazine collection. With the ones I can't bear to rip, I usually find the article/recipe at the mag's website (sunset.com for example,) and clip it to Evernote. If it's not there, I scan it and then put it in Evernote, where I can tag it, so it's not lost in a mountain of data.

The binders I have with recipes and ideas from random print sources, will eventually be scanned as well. I'm looking forward to shedding the paper hoard. Of course there will be a few singular issues of mags I will probably keep. Only a handful though. :)

I keep all the Martha Stewart Living, and still have my copies of Domino and Blueprint. For everything else, I rip out what I like and immediately give the mag away.

Have an alarming collection of Living etc - I cant tear out what I want bc there are too many bits...

The Times Literary Supplement is kept for a couple of months then passed on or recycled...

I now digitally subscribe to a few magazines that were in the "read and toss" category. I do keep some physical copies that have interesting patterns I may use in the future (cross stitching, quilting and sewing).

I'm always sucked in by the free gifts mags offer here in the UK.

I have every Domino, Cookie, and Real Simple from the beginning. We had many Martha Stewarts' a few years ago and after several years those became a bit dated so we tossed many of them, except for a few clippings. The three I mentioned at the beginning seem pretty timeless.

I'm a sucker for keeping magazines, but I recently decided I just need to pair down. I am in the process of going through and clipping only the project or ideas I really love and putting them in a binder, usually one or two per magazine. With cooking magazines, we are starting a new rule where we try any recipes that sound interesting, cut them out if we end up liking them, and then recycle the magazine (all within one month of it arriving in the mail). I do think I will have a hard time parting with certain magazines/periodicals like Stuffed, Craft, and Blueprint (as the last two are now out of print).

I know some people make the transition to digital versions of magazines and I know it is more ecofriendly... But I am so tactile, and I love turning pages and reading actual print on paper. I am one of those people who could never get an e-reader and still goes to the library on a weekly basis, so digital magazines just aren't for me.

Oh, the magazines! I have Dmino, Blueprint, Home Companion and Living Etc. stored in boxes (waterproof, since a roof leak ruined Country Living and Cottage Living). The other 70 or so subscriptions I have get torn up and recycled - I keep pages for inspiration in a binder. I've slowly been converting to digital on Zinio, but admit that reading digitally isn''t half as fun.

Magazines are probably my main clutter problem. As a graphic designer, I like keeping magazines, especially design publications, around for reference. I don't think I will ever be able to bring myself to toss out an issue of Communication Arts (I think I have 10 years worth of them on my office shelf). I take any other design magazines to work to share with coworkers. All other magazines have a one month rule (which sometimes becomes the "whenever-I-clean-off-the-coffee-table" rule).

Magazine hoarding/collecting is going to be an issue for me in the future.

I have maybe eight issues of "Domino" saved (subscribed not long before they decided to call it quits) and now two years worth of "Real Simple". With any other magazines, I rip out the pages I am interested in, put them in a binder, and recycle the rest. For some reason I just cannot make myself get rid of those two!

I do the opposite of what everyone else does, I go through the magazines and rip out the pages that I don't want to see again (ads, masthead, classifieds, uninteresting stories, etc.) which makes each copy much skinnier and easier to store. It still has a cover and can be seasonally sorted and I don't have lots of loose papers necessitating another project just to reorganize them.

When I was forced to move last year, I ended up freecycling my entire Domino collection and a year's worth of Martha Stewart Living after reviewing them one last time. I thought Domino got more pretentious and sillier the longer they published. I've kept others that I liked and I can't bear to get rid of the Gourmet magazines my dear old Dad used to give me every year so I have about 5-6 years worth of them still.

Until my late 20's I held onto every magazine I'd ever bought. Finally I decluttered and tossed them all.

In the last couple years I've started ripping out pages I like & recycling the rest of the magazine. And I journal, so I go through my files of pages as I get to a blank page and paste in pictures that speak to me that day. My journal is approx 8 1/2 x 11 with unlined pages. I find it much more fun than lined pages filled with only words. :) So, I really appreciate those who donate their old magazines. They give me lots of pictures for not much cash!!

I love photography & the images with articles with are rarely posted online. I studied Art & Design, & Fashion so love great design, and like to have wide knowledge of what is happening in the field.
I also love reading but rarely have enough time to read at the time so I have tear sheets piling up waiting for to be read. Unfortunately magazines are less likely to be archived online unlike newspapers. I have friends who keep nothing & want to be like them!

The problem with saving that magazine that you just can't part with because you may need it one day, is that it gets lost in the mass of all the magazines. Unless there is a system in place to store & save articles, photos, recipes, then it is no better than tossed. As an Interior Designer, I often find myself inspired to save a page because of a sofa, & I will file it under sofas, but what about the fabulous lamp on the table next to the sofa, now that's another file...lighting. So I end up copying the page & now I have two of the same in separate files.
I always thought I would make an ottoman of old magazines. Try moving that....

Please donate your unwanted magazines to your local library's book sale.

As much as I enjoy receiving magazines, the modern day truth is that you can scan just about anything or find what you need from the online versions. New York City living requires ruthless decisions about use of space and I am allergic to dust and dust mites so piles of magazines or other clutter are unhealthful for me. Years ago, per an allergist's recommendations, I made sure my bedroom was clutter-free, including books and bookshelves.

I, too, have given the magazines to others to read: dentist's office where I used to live -- and wish there were more places to donate them (at the library if they're new-ish?).

I saved ten years of Real Simple until I just couldn't spare the space anymore. I gave them all away at the same time and I actually haven't missed them. I sold all my issues of Readymade and Domino on ebay. Now I have a bunch of sewing magazines that I'm thinking of selling. I love them, and they can be useful, but I have to face it: there aren't enough years left for me to make one thing out of every single magazine I own, so why hoard them? I am glad that magazines are going digital. Clutter-free is my goal.

THAT is GENIUS

i am a pretty darn good weeder...but NOT with the mags - i have so many Dwell, MSL, Real Simple, Sunset, Do It Yourself, Budget Living, ETC...i once started to tear out and file in a binder...but then i just had a binder instead of a magazine, so there was no point! also it is almost impossible to tear out pages, as there is always something on the back of one page i want in another file, or something that just makes me keep the darn mag. i will always just love to browse the pictures - MSL is always beautiful and timeless just to LOOK at. i am at least trying to weed slowly thru some i have fewer of that i love less, and those i leave in my condo complex laundry room. i'm just lucky i have a big ole attic that is also my studio!

I love magazines and love to save them. Domino, Budget Living, Blender, Bust, back to zines and comics from the 80's and New Ingenue from the 70's. My regret is I don't have any old music magazines from the 70's (yes children, I'm that old)' like Rock Scene. They're all worth keeping to me and schlepping from place to place. whether to display them or have them in a storage box is the question that I have yet to resolve in my new apartment.

If I don't subscribe I don't know what I'm missing and I don't accumulate. What I do keep (Fiddler, Saudi Aramco World - has the greatest colors ever, blacksmith periodicals, and a box of 1970s Sphere) I keep organized. When and if I move, it will be easier to deal with them. What I regret not keeping: women's magazines from the 1940s and 1950s that I didn't value at the time they were available to me.