Organizing Magazines (Part 1) - 10 rules on What to keep

How many magazines is too many? When do you throw them away? How do you decide?

Magazines can be fun to get in the mail and enjoyable to read and relax with.
But what do you do with them once you are finished? Collect them? Donate them or throw them away?
Decreasing how many magazines coming into the home is the key!
If you hear yourself saying, "I know there is a huge stack of magazines I haven't read...but I will!" then you probably have more magazines coming in than you can handle.

Ten Rules To Follow on Keeping Magazines.

1) Only subscribe to magazines that you will actually read and enjoy. If you have too many, pick your top 2 or 3 and stop the others or do not renew the subscription when it comes back up.

2) Limit the number of magazines coming into your house to a number you can realistically read in the month. (I suggest no more than 4 - that is one a week)

3) Once you read them get rid of them. You can donate them to your work, friends, Dr. offices or nursing homes. If that isn't an option or you know you won't do that, then recycle them.

4) If there are articles you want to save, then cut them out and put them in a notebook. Recycle the rest of the magazine. Why keep all the ads and articles that you are not going to read, reread or use?

5) Don't feel like you have to keep magazines because they may someday become collectors items. (most are ruined before then even if they would be worth something)

6) If you are saving them for your kids to use for school reports...don't fool yourself. They are going to go to the internet for content and pictures to print off.

7) If you want to keep a small cache of magazines to have in case your children may need to cut pictures out for a project at school...then keep maybe 5 at the most. Do not keep collecting them for that "just in case" scenario.

8)If there is a magazine that you just HAVE to keep and are Not going to be told you have to get rid of it....That is fine. But limit it to 1 or at the most 2 magazines.

9) Do not keep magazines for longer than 3 months. If you have not read it in 3 months, chances are very slim you ever will and you have more coming in each month to keep up with.

10) Organize the magazines that you are keeping long term or hopefully not saving longer than 3 months.

Part 2 will be on ways to organize your magazines.