Day 7: Magazines {31 Days of Easy Decluttering}

Hilda Rodgers
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Welcome back to 31 Days of Easy Decluttering! Can you believe we’re into week 2 of the series?  Are you feeling less cluttered already?  I hope so!

Throughout this series I’m sharing easy decluttering projects that you can complete in 10-15 minutes.  If you do them, then by the end of the month you’ll be enjoying a less cluttered home!

If you’ve missed any of the previous posts, there are links to them all here.

Today’s Easy Decluttering Project

Today we’re decluttering magazines.  For some people this may be a super easy task if you don’t subscribe to or buy magazines.  For others it may be a tougher one, especially if you’ve been saving magazines for reference (e.g. National Geographic or magazines related to your hobbies).

Magazines are great for ideas, articles, and inspiration.  And if you have a good system for pulling out and organizing the pages you want to save, then they are a helpful resource.  As long as you get rid of the rest of the magazine.  Every single time.

Otherwise magazines become clutter.

If you’re pulling pages from magazines with ideas you want to keep, but then you just pile them up somewhere and never do anything with them, then those pages are clutter! Plus it’s not as necessary to keep pages out of magazines for future reference when they Internet is full of ideas that are easily accessible.

If you just love flipping through a magazine to relax, and you actually do it {not just dream about doing it!}, then by all means enjoy them!  I’m not saying magazines in and of themselves are bad… just that they need to be decluttered from time to time 🙂

So are you ready?  Let’s jump in and declutter those magazines!

Easy Decluttering Steps

Throughout the series, you’ll follow these steps to complete each daily task.  {Don’t forget to take before and after pictures to share too!}

Note: The main purpose of this series is to declutter so don’t get overwhelmed doing too much cleaning.  Once your house is less cluttered it will be easier to clean so you can always come back and do it later!

Also, if you have the time, you can organize the space while you’re doing this step, but don’t get overwhelmed with too much organizing this month.  We’re focused on decluttering!

Purging Tips for Your Magazines

Follow the steps listed above, and use these tips as you purge (step #5) your magazines:

  • Recycle any magazines that are significantly ripped or torn up
  • Give away or recycle all fairly current magazines that you have not read in the last 2-3 months
  • Give away or recycle magazines you have already read or that you’ve read enough of what you wanted to read from them
  • Give away or recycle all magazines that no longer interest you or that you don’t think you’ll read
  • Quickly pull out any pages with ideas you want to keep, unless you think you can find similar ideas online when you need them
  • 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 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
  • Unsubscribe from any magazines that you now read online or that contain similar ideas as blogs or people 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 favourites 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}

There are lots of places you can donate your purged magazines (as long as they’re not too old!).  Obviously you can give them to friends or family members who would enjoy them.  Some professional offices (doctors, dentists, etc.) accept donated magazines.  You can also consider retirement homes, charities, or schools (depending on the content of your magazines). It’s a lot easier to just recycle them though 🙂

If you are planning to donate your magazines though, make sure you actually do it!  Don’t go through the effort of purging them and then leave them in a pile at the door for months.  That’s still clutter!  Give yourself a deadline (a day or a week) and if you haven’t given them away by then, recycle them.

If you do want to keep pages for future reference, there are lots of digital options to store them. You can scan or take a photo of a page in a magazine, save it where you’ll find it back, and then recycle the magazine. It’s a great way to reduce magazine clutter in your home!

Once you’ve decluttered your magazines, enjoy the magazines you kept without feeling overwhelmed with trying to read all the ones that had piled up!

Pictures and Links to Inspire You

  • This post has several great ideas for storing magazines that you are currently reading, as well as tips for storing the clippings you want to keep in a way that you’ll actually find and use them!
Clean and Scentsible
  • And if you want to hear from the expert on decluttering magazines, here’s a 1-minute video from Peter Walsh. 

*Please pin from the original source if you choose to pin these pictures.  If you want to pin this post please use the button at the top.  

If You’re On A Roll…

Good luck with today’s decluttering project!  I’d love to hear how you did, so please leave a comment and use the hashtag #31DaysEasyDecluttering when you share your pictures

How many magazines did you declutter today?  How do you organize your magazines and clippings to keep the clutter at bay?  Any purging tips I missed for magazines?

If you need help decluttering, contact me for in-person organizing services in the Mississauga area, or virtual organizing services anywhere else.

Happy organizing decluttering!


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