Thursday, November 08, 2007

My best 4 ways to tame the magazine monster

For someone who does not own a single magazine subscription, I sure do manage to accumulate a lot of magazines.


For this picture, I went around the house and collected everything in sight!

1. I keep them mainly in the bathrooms (ahem) because that's where they mostly get read. When I find something good, I tear it out there and then so I don't waste time looking for a recipe later. Because of course then I'd get sidetracked and look at all the gorgeous pictures again :)

2. The only time I get through a lot of magazines quickly is when I get my car washed. I take 3 - 4 magazines with me and use the waiting time to read, tear out articles and declutter.

3. I also like taking magazines with me when I'm taking a long plane trip, about 8 hours or more. It's nice because when I'm done, I offer it to the passengers who look like they need something else other than in-flight entertainment. I'm helpful like that :) And the best is I can leave them right there on the aircraft!

4. When I go through magazines, my motto is always less is more. So I try very hard not to keep anything I know deep down I'm not going to need or use. I know myself and even though a recipe might look delicious, it's not likely to be something I try and cook/ bake if it's in the least bit complicated :)

Of course, once I have the 2 - 3 pages per magazine, I use my beloved flipfiles/ display folders to organise them. And since Barb wrote about her great ideas notebook, I started a Gorgeous Things flipfile too with beautiful furniture, houses I like, etc. It's good to dream.

By the way, the short flights to PE and CT don't work for magazines. That's strictly e-book time. I finished 150 pages of reading on this last trip down to Cape Town in between the eating and chatting. I use a plastic book bag like this which works very, very well.

7 comments:

Kin said...

I, as you may have read, have a recipe magazine buying problem. But I've switched focus and now buy a local financial magazine which I keep every issue of (11 per year) because while some of the information dates, it can be still useful as a comparison in later years (and yes I've used it like that) and a lot of the information doesn't date (although is repeated every few years).

I have no real way of organising them though...

Alexis Jacobs said...

I have some of the same issues. Thanks for the great ideas!

Upward Falling Autumn said...

I am absolutelt psycho when it comes to magazines. My boyfriend thinks it's totally OCD, but maybe others will appreciate it :)

I noticed that when I get magazines, I get distracted & wind up missing the fun stuff because of all of the icky advertisements. So, when I first get my mags, I sit down (while I'm watching TV or lisening to the radio) and tear out all of the ads & they go straight to the recycling. I can ENJOY the mags SO much more.

And when I see a recipe I would like to try, I cut it out right then and staple it to an index card to go into my recipe box. I keep a bunch of the blank cards in the back of my recipe box with one of those tiny staplers from the $1 store - works great!

Marcia Francois said...

Bohgirl, I LOVE your idea about getting rid of all the ads first! Inspired :)

Megan Spears said...

Okay - you don't subscribe to one magazine? How do you do that? There are so many wonderful magazines that are out there... even Organize...? Ya know... the holidays are right around the corner... maybe Santa will have to make a far trip to your corner of the earth with that delicious magazine!

Zakgirl said...

Marcia,

Started reading your blog today and subscribed of course.

I can't bare to tear out recipes from magazines. I have my own solution. I realize that most recipes are repeated on the internet and very easy to find when I want to cook them so I no longer collect and store recipes around the house. Oh, except for those absolute favorites just in case the power goes off.

As for passing magazines on - hmmm, I have been a bit of a hoarder and I find it hard to part with mags, again the internet has made this a whole lot less painful.

Thanks for the great blog!

Unknown said...

Marcia: I love magazines but only subscribe to a few. When I see a recipe or article I like, I use my printer copy feature. This leaves the mag intact and I recycle it at the hospital or doctor's office. I like to think others enjoy reading something new while they wait. As for reading LOTS of magazines, I use the library!

ShareThis