And who could ever turn down a totally free subscription like that give with your entry to the Auto Show?
But we all know the problem with magazines.
We get them, maybe flip through, and then put them in a pile or on the floor or something.
We don't don't read that much of them but want to, so we don't throw them away.
Sometimes people even get those organizers and keep them indefinitely.
Clutter!!!
1. Don't subscribe to any magazine you aren't REALLY going to read, no matter how cheap. I will likely go to the auto show this week, but will not be signing up for the free Car & Driver magazine because I won't read it. I subscribed to Men's Fitness because it was so cheap, but I don't really read it, so I will not be renewing.
If there is an magazine that you actually read 90% of the articles, that's probably a keeper.
[side question: do you subscribe to a magazine you read the vast majority of?]
2. If there are a couple of articles I want to read, I'll rip them right out of the magazine and put them in a place I have downtime (by the bedside or in that other room where reading happens :-)
Don't keep magazines. Throw them out!!!
What other tips to you have for preventing magazine clutter?
Here are some ideas that might work, two non-geek ideas and two geek ideas:
ReplyDelete* Agree with friends to be "gatekeepers," so that you read stuff they might be interested in and vice versa. The friend is a good enough friend to know what will interest you, and give you just that.
* Get a library card. Many of the mags are there. If you're not interested enough to go there to read, then you're probably not interested. (Same goes for buying DVDs, although you can check those out, whereas you probably can't check out mags.)
* Use the internet. Most mags have a substantial amount of them on-line even for non-subscribers. For example, my alumni magazine, Technology Reviews has all of it available for a while. And now here's a "cheat": Even stuff that is not available can often become available if you set your internet browser to pretend that it's the Google search engine! http://www.ogletreeseo.com/22.html has details.
* Scan to electronic form for the magazine articles you want to save. Cluttered computer file folders aren't as bulky and noticeable as paper. An advantage if you scan to PDF and then use Adobe Acrobat (say for example) to do optical character recognition is that the entire file on your computer is then content-searchable.