31 Days of Decluttering - Day #7 - Magazines

Another "uh-oh" category for me!  I love magazines!!  Every Thursday after work I head straight to Kroger's to get the latest People and US Weekly issues that come out.  I then pass them off to my mom, co-workers, staff, and clients I work with after I'm done with them.  The ones that I haven't gotten to read yet are stashed in my home office.  

Here's the "before" photo of my stash:

I actually had a lot less magazines than I thought I would.  Still, if there's an entire cubby in the office devoted to magazines, that's too many in my opinion!  Some of these have to go!

Decluttering steps according to "From Overwhelmed to Organized":

• Recycle any magazines that are significantly ripped or torn up
• Give away all magazines that you have not read in the last 2 months
• Quickly pull out any pages with ideas you want to keep, unless you think you can find similar ideas online when you need them
• Give away magazines you have already read or that you've read enough of what you wanted to read from them
• Give away all magazines that no longer interest you (or another family member)
• Give away all magazines you don't think you'll read
• If you have stashes of old editions of magazines, put a plan together to go through them to decide what you want to keep or purge.  You may find you've been holding onto many of magazines that no longer interest you.  And if you haven't looked at them in a long time, you probably don't really need to keep them.   

To help keep magazine clutter under control in the future, follow these tips:

• Unsubscribe from all magazines that you no longer read {this prevents future magazine clutter and saves you money!}
• Unsubscribe from any magazines that you now read online or that contain similar ideas as blogs or websites you follow
• Consider how much time you have available to read magazines and only keep subscriptions to the number you've decided you have time to read {choose your absolute favorites and unsubscribe to the rest}
• If you subscribe to a new magazine in the future, unsubscribe from another one so your net magazine intake remains the same {like the one-in-one-out rule for household items}

Here's the "after" photo:

The ones in the red container are magazines I want to keep (such as ones from 9/11, the Royal Wedding, GQ with Tim Tebow on the cover (he's a hottie!!), etc.).  The ones in the left container are ones I still want to read.  And everything in the center went straight to the recycling bin.  Now that cubby is free to put other things in.  Who-hoo!!

Next Up:  Day #8 - Travel Mugs and Water Bottles