Creative Changes Blog

Magazines have a power over us. Those beautiful cover photos and enticing titles that promise a life more beautiful, wealthy, perfectly cooked and glamorous lure us into the their world of perfection. While there is much to be gleaned from those magazine pages, magazine clutter is the issue I want to talk about today.

Recently I was giving a talk about organizing to a teachers group, and during the Q and A at the end of the session was a question regarding this woman's love of magazines, but her inability to keep up with the reading, leading to great piles of magazines all over her house. This is a question that comes up all the time. In fact our local Feng Shui expert, Kathleen Tumpane talked about it in her newspaper column this week. She says that unread magazines are "swamp scum , energetically speaking"

The problem arises when they pile up faster than we can read them, or another problem is that we think that we will refer back to them someday for the one or two items of real interest in each issue. Tossing a $5.00 magazine in the recycling bin seems unforgivable, doesn't it? The fact that we might feel guilty that we spent the money on the magazine, but have not even looked at it is NOT a good reason to keep it, in fact the opposite is true. As the piles accumulate we feel worse and worse. Let's stop that destructive cycle!

Here are a few suggestions on how to manage the magazine madness.

1. Reduce or eliminate the subscriptions - even just temporarily until you catch up.

2. Visit the websites for your favorite magazines and check their archives for past issues. If it is easy enough to find the information you might want in the future, there is no need to save the magazine after you have read it.

3. Pick an organization or two that could really use a source of good reading material - hospitals, your doctor's office, nursing homes, senior centers are just a few that come to mind. As with any of your donatable items, it seems easier when you know they are going to a "good home".

4. Sort you magazine piles by date and get rid of anything older than a year old. If you subscribe to a trade journal that has limited appeal to the broader public, perhaps you have a colleague who could use them.

5. Consider sharing a subscription with friends, family or colleagues. One magazine could easily serve several people, then get donated or recycled.

6. When you first read a magazine use post-it-notes to mark the items of interest, and that will make the review process later much easier.

7. Instead of saving the whole magazine, just tear out the items that you want to refer back to.

8. Create article files for future reference, using categories to make retrieving them easier.

9. When a new magazine arrives, get rid of the previous issue.

10. Store one year of magazines in a magazine holder that will fit on your bookcase neatly.


Any other suggestions from you readers??

Until next time,

Sandra

Labels: magazine clutter, magazines, organizing magazines