OT: What do you do with old magazines?

[egoldber]

So I am sloooowwwlllyyy but surely continuing in my goal to de-clutter my house in 2004. I am now ready to tackle magazines.

For exampple, I have about 5 years of Wine Spectator that I adore too much to throw away.
I have 2 years of Gourmet that I actually refer to periodically and don't want to throw away.
I have 2 years of Martha Stewart (shockingly enough) that I haven't looked at in years, but it seems a shame to throw out!
I have 12 years (yes, that's right 12) of Bon Appetit that I consider a treasure and refer to constantly.

I just threw out 2 years of Parenting and about ayear ago, I threw out several years of Consumer Reports that I never referred to any more since I generally disagree with their test criteria!

But this is the kind of magazine collectors we are. Help!

[MelissaTC]

You might want to check out ebay and see if there is interest. I know people who have bought magazines off of ebay. You never know!

You can also contact your local library and see if they want the donation or if a local school would want them. I know our local library has a section where you can take a magazine, leave a magazine. I have dumped quite a few magazines there!

I recently let go of 4 years of scrapbooking magazines. It was hard and most looked like they never had been read. I kept them thinking I would refer to the articles but I never did. I wound up donating them to a local church that holds a free monthly scrapbooking event for the community. They were happy to take them.

HTH!

[memedee]

Square baskets with lids that I stack and label and put everywhere I have space.
Under the coffee table for the most referred to and under beds and other tables
I bought really pretty ones that all match so they look good.

[papal]

If you want to store them, you could get those magazine holders (cardboard ones at an Office Depot.. nicer ones at Ikea). They usually hold about a 8-12 mags. I label the holder and put a particular year in one (eg. Martha 2002). And then bunch all of those together on a bookshelf.
The one thing i do consistently, even though it destroys the magazine itself, is that i rip out all the pages that have advertisments on both sides as soon as i get the magazine. This reduces the thickness of the magazine by almost half and it makes it MUCH easier to find articles.

If they are not easy to access, and it is not easy to find something that you are looking for or if you have not opened or read any in over a year i would either organize them or get rid of them! :)

If you are collecting recipes you might consider cutting the ones you like out and putting them in a recipe-book sorted by Appetizer, Main Course (Poultry, Meat, Seafood, Pasta..) and Dessert.

And then ofcourse you could donate them. When i wanted to donate my National Geographics, I contacted them and here is the email they sent me:

"These organizations distribute primarily in other countries. Most of them can pay to send books and magazines overseas, but not for postage to their offices or warehouses.
However, the cost of shipping and the estimated value of the donations are usually tax deductible. Each organization has different policies on donations and procedures for packing, so contact them directly for specific instructions.

Books for Africa
5233 Silver Maple Circle
Minneapolis, MN 55343 USA
Tel. 1-612-939-9899
Fax 1-612-933-6966
email: [email protected]

Books for Asia
The Asia Foundation
451 Sixth Street
San Francisco, CA 94103 USA
Tel. 1-415-982-4640
Fax 1-415-543-8131
email: [email protected]

Bridge to Asia
450 Mission Street
Suite 407
San Francisco, CA 94105-2521 USA
Tel. 1-415-356-9040
Fax 1-415-356-9044
email: [email protected]

Brother's Brother Foundation
1501 Reedsdale Street, Suite 3005
Pittsburgh, PA 15233-2341 USA
Tel. 1-412-321-3160
Fax 1-412-321-3325
email: [email protected]

International Book Project
1440 Delaware Avenue
Lexington, KY 40505 USA
Tel. 1-606-254-6771
Fax 1-606-367-0242
email: [email protected]

Scarsdale Womens Club
Operation Bookshelf
37 Drake Road
Scarsdale, NY 10583 USA
Tel. 1-914-723-0024

Good luck in finding a new home for your National Geographics."

hth!

[egoldber]

"If they are not easy to access, and it is not easy to find something that you are looking for or if you have not opened or read any in over a year i would either organize them or get rid of them! "

Now see, if I could do that, I wouldn't have this problem, LOL!!! But here's my "index" for Bon Appetit: epicurious.com!!! :) They have about the last 10 years of recipes on-line. I do a search on epicurious, and it tells me the issue the recipe is in and then I pull the mag with the recipe. If I cut them up, I would NEVER be able to find anything and I would never use them! This way they are perfectly usable to me.

The Martha Stewarts may have to go, but honestly, they take up soooo little room compared to everything else that even if I only use the November and December issues, it hardly seems worth it to get rid of them! :)

[papal]

Wow.. that is so cool that you can do a search on epicurious.com. In that case.. if you have not already, i would sort them using magazine holders and put them on a bookshelf devoted to mags. That way they are atleast easy to get to. You should not take more than 30 seconds (even lesser would be better) to find the exact magazine you are looking for! :)

C'mon Beth.. give up the Martha's.. you will feel much better! LOL. And if you have the Bon Appe####, then you are set in terms of recipes. Personally i find her recipes never taste as good as they look.. her presentation is better than the food. I save them for the 'good things' section.. it taught me how to fold those wretched fitted sheets! :)

[jbowman]

My husband and I seem to have magazines coming out of our ears! I separate the magazines we've finished reading into a pile and give them to my friends, our nanny, or I donate them to the gym where I workout. My friends and I trade magazines, so we end up saving money and reducing clutter (that said, my husband owns every issue of Spy and refuses to part with his collection!).

[NEVE and TRISTAN]

I am in the same boat...Southern Living, Victoria (no longer out) and tons of cooking mags...they are all under my bed in bins...friend's beg me to borrow one that they find a recipe in etc...and I refuse...I treasure them for some odd reason...
Neve
http://home.nc.rr.com/ourbabytristan
AKA "mama2be"-forgot password
and Baby Boy Tristan born @UNC
Feb 25, 2003
Brother to 3 pups "gees" and 2 kitties

[jojo2324]

I havne't read the other responses, so sorry if this has all been said.

I know that there's a market on ebay for Martha Stewart (especially the weddings and kids/baby issues), and a smaller one for Gourmet. I sold a lot of 7 October issues of MS this past fall, and it got me $20, plus the buyer paid shipping. (If you send it media rate, it's much cheaper, since those magazines get heavy!)

You could start notebooks of the most pertinent articles. Use a razor to cut the page, and then insert it into a plastic page holder.

We just de-cluttered our basement this past fall, and ended up recycling years' worth of National Geographic, Martha Stewart, Gourmet, etc. But our basement still doesn't look any emptier, LOL!! :)

[jojo2324]

(that said, my
>husband owns every issue of Spy and refuses to part with his
>collection!).

LOL, what happened to Spy??

[jbowman]

My husband says it folded--it was such a great, funny magazine! Very early 90s!

[spu]

I recycled all 4 years of my Martha Stewart and 5 years of my cooking light. I figured all the recipies are online, and since they've been in the basement since we moved in, and I haven't opened them since, then I probably wouldn't miss them. Now I wish I saved them for the babies to tear out, but we get so many free mags from our miles programs, that there's always plenty to share.

I toss (recycle) Consumer Reports previous years and keep only the most recent year. Anything earlier than that is usually out of date.
susan

twin girls 7.20.02
charlotte + else

http://sunger2.home.comcast.net/bash/nonflash/year.html

[crl]

Hi,

I trade magazines with a friend at work, which makes me feel better about aallll those magazines I read. For the ones I keep, I have clear acrylic magazine holders from the Container Store. The clear part makes it easier to find what I'm looking for. Whatever is left after the trade/save thing, goes to the library. Other potential donation sites: nursing homes, preschools, hospital waiting rooms . . . .

[deborah_r]

>The one thing i do consistently, even though it destroys the
>magazine itself, is that i rip out all the pages that have
>advertisments on both sides as soon as i get the magazine.
>This reduces the thickness of the magazine by almost half and
>it makes it MUCH easier to find articles.
>


Rashmi - love this idea!

Beth - I have the same problem, so can't help you here! I think I finally threw away some old Dog Fancy's and Cat Fancy's, but it was hard...

[em_jon98]

We keep our issues of Gourmet and Bon Appetit in magazine holders (the cardboard-style, purchased from IKEA in a multiple pack for a few bucks) on a shelving unit in the kitchen with the rest of our cookbooks. We have them sorted by month, one box for each year of each magazine. This makes them as handy as any other cookbook to pull out and use, which we do quite frequently.

If you don't have the space to store them in the kitchen, perhaps a bookshelf or unit somewhere else in the house will work for you. Do you have room in the pantry? My mom keeps her Bon Appetit's in her pantry (which is the size of my closet, so she has the room :).) I have put a few years in the basement, on the shelving unit where we store our excess canned goods. They aren't too much of a hassle to run down for when we need them.

As for the other magazines, I have started to purge on a large scale. I keep my Better Homes and Gardens on a bookshelf in the basement, but I'm thinking I should recycle those as well. Everything else--Parenting, Time, SI, etc.--I'm trying to rememeber to recycle as soon as we are done reading it.

[flagger]

Do what Ms. Flagger did and tear out the recipes she was interested in. Then I have been slowly scanning them in as a JPG file. When we get in a creative mood, we just go to Photoshop and print something from the Recipe folder.

I obviously save the recipe by its name for easy retrieval.

But don't feel so bad, my parents had YEARS and YEARS worth of National Geographics.

[redhookmom]

I recently went to a Mom's Night Out Book/Magazine Swap!! It was great fun.

[JLiebCamm]

I have recently begun getting rid of 7 years of magazine clutter (and it feels great!). I haven't been able to part with my Martha Stewart ones, though, so maybe I'm not a good role model. But I have found that taking the rest of them to the various waiting rooms of the hospital where I work has been greatly appreciated.

[sntm]

There are so many places to donate them that would be very very appreciative:

*donate parenting/children's magazines to a crisis pregnancy center or women/children's shelter or leave in a pumping room at workplaces

*donate to local hospital for the in-room magazines

*donate to nursing homes (they LOVE to have magazines, even old ones)

I'm often too lazy to do this (shame on me) but I try to do it as often as I can. When I worked at the VA hospital, those vets would gobble up every magazine they could, even things like "Redbook"! Wives/family members loved it also. Interesting nice thing about the post office -- they take all the magazines that are "dead letters," where people never corrected the mailing address, and donate those.

I did ebay all of my MS Weddings magazines, since at the time I had every one that was published (had even ordered back issues.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
shannon
not-even-pregnant-yet-overachiever
trying-to-conceive :)
PREGNANT! EDD 6/9/03
mama to Jack 6/6/03

[peanut4us]

We take all of our magazine to our city recycling center. I'm about to go through a year's worth of cooking light to cut recipes to try and chuck teh rest, I swear you could bury me and my ancestors for many years back under all of the magazines that have come to my house... I'm a tree killer :(

[amp]

I read through some of the replies and I think if you can find the Bon Appetite recipes by searching a website and you use them all the time, I would keep them and organize by month in the holders that Rashmi referred to.

I also agree with either seeing if there's a market on ebay for the mags you have. I was suprised to see past issues of not so in-demand mags selling there recently (like current magazines...scrapbooking, etc)!

Aside from that, here's what I do (and I realize this would be a bit overwhelming if I had several years stacked up, but take them a mag or two at a time and you really could get through them.)
When I read magazines, on the first or second time through, I dogear the pages of the things I am interested in referring to later. Then I do the following....

Scrapbooking mags - Hold till I have about 5-10 mags or when I have time, I cut out articles, layouts, color schemes, etc. that I like and put in the Scrapbooking reference manual I made by topic (embellishments, layouts, holiday themes, paper piecing patterns, lettering, etc)

Parenting mags - tear out pages I want to refer to (eating, shoes shopping, discipline, art projects, etc) and file in my parenting folders in the filing cabinet.

Recipes - Tear out the recipes that interest me and put in my recipe book. If I like it when I cook it, it gets added on the computer to my recipe database (I retype it with any changes I make) and made a permanent part of the recipe book.

Consumer Reports - recently kept 2 yrs worth and threw away 3 yrs worth. They repeated most of the reviews in the last couple years anyway, so that is the most current info

Things to look up online (shopping websites, money websites, et) just get written down on a sticky note and stuck on the computer till the next day when I can look up and bookmark the site if needed.

Good luck!

[loewymartin]

For the ones we keep I bought the 3 inch ring binders. And then found magazine inserts - they are plastic "holders" that you slide the magazine into and the other side has 3 holes for the rings (found an example! http://tinyurl.com/2cx8m)

I was keeping all of the Consumer Reports for the past 3 years like this. I finally threw out all of the Martha Stewart (except for the Wedding and Baby issues!) I still save my parenting mags, but most likely will cut out the articles I liked and put them in a binder. I just never seem to look at old issues - I tend to run out and buy a new one for crafts etc.

All that said, I now get MS Everyday Food. That's a little mag, so I'm not sure what I'll end up doing to store them!

Michelle - Mom to Alia born 5/16/02

[egoldber]

Thanks for thoughts!

But I just wanted to show you what 12 years of Bon Appetit looks like. It really isn't that bad. I now keep them on a bookshelf in the eat-in area next to my kitchen. I have attached a pic. This is 12 years of BA, and 4 years of Gourmet and a few other random cookbooks.

The next pic is the two years of Martha.

The REAL problem is the Wine Spactators (that are oversized) and the YEARS of other magazines I didn't even mention: Fine Gardening, Threads, Organic Gardening, Fine Woodworking, Fine Homebuilding, etc....

http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/user_files/2602.jpg


http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/user_files/2603.jpg

[starrynight]

This is what I do.. I save them until I have the time to really pick through them. If there is no article I see another future need for I recycle it.

If there is only one article I need or want for future referance I tear out that article and it goes in a binder that is organized by stuff -health, decorating etc etc.

If it is a recipe/cooking mag that I want saved I just stick it in the cabinet I keep cook books in.

It helps cut down the clutter a bit! The few I save every issue of go in a rubbermaid bin in the bottom of my closet so they are there when I need them but out of the way. I do this with family fun mags since there are so many good ideas and recipes for kids etc in them.

[parkersmama]

It sounds like most of you refer back to your old magazines more than I do but here's my "system" as such.

I read a couple of years ago in the book "Confessions of an Organized Housewife" (a great organizing book if you're in the market!) that most people tear out things that they don't refer back to. This is exactly what I had been doing! Also, she suggested that people tend to read a magazine once and think they'll go back and tear out the things they want to keep but then forget to go back and pretty soon you're sitting on years worth of magazines.

So, as I read a magazine, I tear out anything that I think I want to keep *on the first read through*. I used to keep files of stuff but found that I almost never refer back to them. This was mainly parenting info and I found that I usually go online to find my solutions so keeping the articles was wasted space. Now, I pretty much only keep the articles on birthday parties, Halloween costumes/decorations, and other holiday info. I do frequently refer to old articles for b'day ideas and Halloween costumes.

I keep about 2 or 3 months of each magazine we get on the shelf of our end table, although these are gonna have to be moved now that Amy Grace is crawling and has discovered them! I usually clean them out every few months and recycle them. Occasionally I give them to a doctor's office or other place looking for magazines. We do keep a couple of years of Consumer Reports and dh somehow manages to hold onto all his Acoustic Guitar mags but otherwise, out they go! I'm a lot happier without the clutter.

Beth, I want to come over to your house for some meals...you sound like you must be a fabulous cook!! ;)

[egoldber]

LOL! You are very kind. Most meals are very simple. But on Sunday we had some friends over and made a menu from the latest BA March 2004 issue:

Mesclun Salad with Oven Roasted Peppers and Feta Dressing
Wine Braised Lamb Shanks with Herbes de Provence
Mashed Potato and Turnip Gratin (I substituted cauliflower for the potato to make in South Beach Diet friendly)

plus appetizer and dessert.

I have to say it was all super yummy. The best part was, this one of their "easy" menus, so everything was do ahead!

And there is just no way I would cut up my BA's. I would never find anything and I also love looking at the pictures to see the food presentation.

But my other mags, sigh, I think I just gotta let go. But it occured to me that my Marthas might become semi-valuable if she gets convicted this week! LOL! :)

[parkersmama]

Yum!!

And, LOL, definitely hold onto them until we see about the conviction. ;)