Organize and Energize: Are Your Magazines Collecting Dust? 7 ways to Conquer Magazine Clutter
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
Take a quick walk through each room in your home or office and seek out these magazines. How many did you find? Now that you are aware of how many you actually have, are you shocked? Think about why you are holding on to these magazines. Is it because there was an interesting article that caught your eye? Do you even remember why you were holding onto them?
Here are 7 ways to conquer the magazine clutter:
Are they worth money? Are you holding onto magazines that you think may be worth money? If you decide to keep them, be sure to store them in a bin that keeps out the weather elements. Don’t let them collect dust on a shelf. If you are keeping them for purely sentimental reasons, be sure to store them properly. You can even frame the vintage covers or interesting articles and hang them around the home or office instead of storing them in a bin, never to be seen again.
Do you really need to save the entire magazine? As you skim through the magazine, tear out the articles you want to save. If you want to keep certain articles in these magazines, you have to set some time aside to go through each magazine and tear out the articles you want to keep. Sounds like a big, time consuming project, right? It’s going to make you really think about if you want to go through the trouble of sitting for hours going through each one. It may not be worth it and you may decide you just want to get rid of them and start fresh.
Have a plan. Going forward, when you receive a magazine, make a plan to tear out the articles immediately instead of having the magazines hang around for months. Tear out articles and place in a binder. Tab out and categorize sections for quick access. I find that if you just tear them out and put in a manila folder in a filing cabinet, it will take you longer to find what you are searching for. Keep the articles in clear plastic sheets to protect them and place them in labeled binders. You want to be able to find something and find it quick when you are searching for it. You will even be more apt to use the binder than rifling through an old magazine for an article.
Scanning is an option. If you want to totally get rid of all the paper, scanning pages is always an option. You can create categorized, organized folders.
Think about donating them. You can donate magazines to a doctor’s office or local school for art projects. Make a make a plan to donate them within the week of going through them. If they are still hanging around by the end of the week, throw them in the recycle bin.
Think about how you function. Are you more apt to head over to the binder when you are searching for an article or do you want to go to your computer and search? There is no wrong way to do this. It’s a preference and it has to work for whoever is utilizing the system. The key here is to have a system and choose one that will work well for you.
Set aside some time and tackle this project. If you break the process down, it won’t be so overwhelming. When you are going through the magazines, don’t worry about how you are going to organize the articles, just focus on the articles you are ripping out and keeping. The minute you stop to think about where the articles go, you will lose focus, get distracted and your project will take you twice as long.
How long does it take you to get through a magazine or catalog? It may be time to cancel subscriptions or stop purchasing them at the store if you can’t get to them in a desired time frame.
Kristin Carcieri-MacRae, the founder and owner of Organizing in RI, has always enjoyed finding creative ways to streamline the environment around her. She has appeared on air on Patricia Raskin's Positive Business Radio and her articles have been published in the Rhode Island Small Business Journal and New England Home Life. Kristin's CD, Organizing Basics, is a 1-hour guide for the person who wants to get organized but doesn't know where to start. She is also available for organizing workshops. Tune in to her radio show, Organize, Energize! on http://www.talkstreamradio.com.
Related Slideshow: 5 Organizing Blunders
Avoid these mistakes and your project will take less time than you expected. You won’t be as stressed or as overwhelmed as you anticipated. You will be amazed at what you have accomplished. You will be motivated and energized to tackle another project.
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