Welcome back to Clutter Busters! This week’s clutter culprit? Magazines.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to sit down with a favorite magazine. The articles are just the right length for me to read when I have a 15-20 minute break, and I often find great ideas I want to try in the kitchen, garden or classroom.
But, as everyone with one or more magazine subscriptions knows, magazines cause clutter. I hang on to them because I don’t want to throw all those great ideas away, but they pile up quickly, and then I have a real mess.
My first solution for the stacks of magazines lying around the house was to buy a hanging folder storage box. I spent hours ripping out articles that interested me and separating them into categories: travel, party gifts, party themes, Christmas gifts, recipes, decorating…the list went on and on.
So I had a lot of great ideas stored in one place. There was just one problem. I rarely used the storage box. Instead, like most people today, I turn to the Internet for household cleaning solutions, recipes, and party ideas.
Does that mean I should cancel all my magazine subscriptions if I want a clean, clutter-free house? Not at all.
I still enjoy the quick break magazines bring. But instead of storing the articles in a physical storage box (which also takes up space!), I search the magazine’s website for digital images I can pin to one of my Pinterest boards. That way, I can access all those great ideas from my computer—and throw the print version in the recycling box. Or—even better—shred those magazines and add them to my compost pile.
If you have other ideas on managing magazine clutter, please add them to the comment section below.