Most families receive an average of 2-4 magazine subscriptions on a monthly basis, some of us even more. Going by personal experience and by talking to friends and clients I have come to realize that many of us are getting magazines that often go unread. Sad but true!
My story: Like many other families we also received our fair share of magazines. Silly enough, but my husband and I would sign up for new golf, investment or health magazines over the years because they were free, using leftover airline-miles that would otherwise go unused. This would have been a wonderful deal had we actually taken the time to read them, but we mostly didn’t. What was the reason? We either realized that we didn’t really care for a particular magazines or that we just didn’t have (or take) the time to read them. I have to admit that I let this go on for a bit longer than I should have, but finally just had enough of the waste and let the subscription run out.
This week why not take a few minutes to think about how many magazines you receive each month and how many of them you actually have time to read. Then decide to only keep the ones you absolutely love and let the other subscriptions run out to cut down on the piles.
Next, let me ask you a question: What do you do with the magazines once you have actually read them? Do you save the entire magazine because of a particular recipe or an article you liked and therefore have stacks and boxes full of them? If that is the case you may want to create folders labeled by subject (recipes, health, money, etc) then rip out the page that interests you and recycle the rest to help cut down on the paper clutter. Just make sure to routinely purge through the folders to keep them current. Another important thing to keep in mind when deciding whether to cut out an article – on average we will only retrieve 20% of anything we ever file and most everything is available online when we need it– so be selective.
Oh, and if you are staring at a mile-high pile of unread magazines at this very moment you may want to decide to only keep the current month’s copy and let go of the rest – I mean – do you really want to read about the hottest summer trends as the Fall season is in full swing? 🙂
One more thing – consider sharing your magazines with senior homes or doctor’s offices if you have time to drop them off, if not please recycle.
OrganizingbyYve 