Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Reducing the clutter...Magazines

I'm like you, I love magazines, and I've kept them and they have accumulated over the years.
But the truth is I only browsed through them rarely

 In an effort to truly de-clutter my house I decided to tackle this problem.
This small stack of Country Home is only about 1/5 of the quantity of magazines I had accumulated. The plan was to slowly browse through each and every one, pulling out the articles and photos I wanted to keep. This is a good project for TV couch time.

Once a magazine was thoroughly flipped through, I did what is so hard.
I threw it out!
Now for the ugly truth. because these go back so far, some as far as the 90's, most of them were not all that interesting. Maybe it's because I'd thumbed through them so often, but I did not find them all that inspiring. What I liked, I kept and discarded the rest.

 I was able to reduce about a hundred magazines down to just this binder

Then I separated them into categories and placed the photos and articles in sheet protectors.
I added simple tabs made from post it notes to separate the sections. 

Now it's easy for me to grab the binder, and find the idea or project that I felt was 
important enough to keep.
It's also easy to remove and replace them as I find new projects. 

Think of it like a pinterest board, but in a book.
And I cleared out a bunch of bookshelf space too!!!!

5 comments:

lifespassion said...

I started that about 10 years ago - have several binders full and STILL have a ton of mags!

Rita C at Panoply said...

Several years ago I started those binders, but this past summer (about 5 yrs after the original project), I was purging and literally threw away hundreds of magazines - it felt so good!
For the last couple years I've recycled my magazines by passing onto my sister first, and then she gives them back and they go to a friend - who then gives them to her daughter. That feels good too!

Unknown said...

This was one of my winter projects for all my collected gardening catalogs ...pick the interesting articles/ideas, plastic sheaths and indexed into a binder ...then chuck the detritus!

lorene said...

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your posts about reducing your clutter. I am "trying" to do the same thing, so much so that I announced that I was going to "Purge and Clean in 2015". Geez! And I have so many magazines as well! Good luck to you! Also, I LOVED the memory closet idea!

Margo said...

I am so happy this is catching on, Love your catch phrase Lorene. Today I tackle a closet with a lot of blankets and pillows etc, and I decided "space bags" are my best bet.

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