Useful tips for storing publications and subscriptions, ideas for space management. Includes product information and creative projects.
Your favorite magazine arrives. Flipping through it, you read it from cover to cover, devouring all the great information and ideas. Then you toss it aside. Pretty soon you have an overflowing stack of magazines that are rapidly reducing your living space.
Sounds familiar?
If so, you are among many magazine readers who suffer from a common malady: magazine mayhem. Before canceling those subscriptions, consider these solutions.
Be picky. If you are a real magazine lover, chances are you keep copies of all of your subscriptions. To reduce magazine mayhem, you may want to change this. Look over your subscriptions. Consider which ones are most useful to you, and consider keeping hard copies of only those issues that are really jam-packed with useful material. For the others you may want to consider recycling them in the following issues.
Store the basics. Instead of stockpiling complete issues of your favorite magazines, you can store just those articles, recipes and great tips that you or your family may need for personal or business purposes. One great way to do this is by carefully removing the back and front cover of the publication and clipping it or stapling it to your selections. Beware how you use your paper clips, many times they can clip to other articles if you overstuff your storage bins.
File frequently. To avoid magazine mayhem in your file cabinets, it's important to file frequently. To do so, you can use file cabinets, book shelves, oversized storage bins or filing boxes (cardboard, metal or plastic). Before purchasing any of these, look around your home to see what you can convert to form a suitable storage container, or check out garage sales for used file cabinets or credenzas.
Keep them neat. Managing your magazine mayhem is easier if you keep your magazines tidy. For starters, consider using a magazine rack in your bedroom or den in which you can place your current issues. Also, consider where in your home you can place a permanent space saver, file cabinet, book shelf or storage bin for your old issues. Next, consider ways to improve how you store your magazines. Whatever you use, the key is to make sure your reading material is not crumpled, difficult to find, or exposed to moisture. If you are saving complete copies of magazines, rubber band issues together so that you can easily retrieve multiple issues of a magazine. If you are storing clippings, consider doing so by subject matter (i.e., chocolate cake recipes, tax tips for small businesses, etc.). Every six months or every year, take time to update your cabinet to ensure your information is still timely. This is especially true for time-sensitive articles dealing with legislative issues.
Share knowledge. After reading your favorite magazine and gleaning all that can be gleaned, consider passing it along. You probably know a handful of friends who would love to have the magazine. If not, consider passing it along to a lending library, school, hospital or physician reading room or other neighborhood organization. If you have children's magazines on hand, also consider sharing these with parents you know, your child's school or your child's doctor. Another great way to share your magazine is to use them to for your child's school projects, or to offer them to your neighbors for their kids school-related work.
