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2010-03-09

Time to Let Go

I've been trying really hard to de-clutter this winter. I have a difficult time letting go of stuff, I get all emotionally attached, but our house is only so big (or so small) and for the sake of my sanity, I needed to re-organize. One of the biggest space offenders in our house is magazines. I love pretty pictures and useless information, so I'm a sucker for the glossies. We get some subscriptions but I also just buy them on a whim and when I see a stack and estimate how much they cost me, I cry a little inside for the pair of shoes (nice ones!) that could have been purchased instead. I'm trying to cut down on the number of magazines in the house by going through the archives and making tough decisions (like the Bachelor, only tougher...). It's really fun to page through magazines from a few years back and wonder at how trends and life played out. Two things struck me about fashion magazines from 2004 and onward...

#1. Fringes, lace, nude and bows will always be declared a 'hot new trend' in some magazine every season.
#2. Mischa Barton used to dress really nice... like Best Dressed List nice, what happened?

Surviving the winter purge so far is Vogue, Lucky, Elle and In Style. My Glamours and Cosmos got cut...sorry kids. I worry a little that I should save them because how else will I know 'Men's New Sexual Needs' (actual title) and other important news? I actually think that Glamour has very attractive editorials though, so I went through and ripped out anything inspiring first. The torn pages of these past editorials provided me with my new 'must-have' list...

magazine1


#1. A ridiculously pretty see-through white dress with a bold and sassy floral slip.
#2. A knit body suit. I'm pretty sure I'd look scary but I still want one.
#3. A full length khaki skirt with pleats and tucks...sigh.
(I feel a little bad because I don't have direct references for these images as I threw out the magazines... which was the whole purpose of my clean sweep, remember? )

What do you guys do with your old magazines? What magazines makes the cut? And do you feel guilty about the ones you recycle?

27 comments :

Anonymous said...

Oof. I have no tolerance for Cosmo anymore. The covers just make me mad. Love magazines, though, and subscribe to Glamour, Self, and Real Simple.

And oh, Marissa Cooper. Maybe she'll make a comeback...

Unknown said...

I have photo #1 in my inspiration folder. It was on my list for last summers "to make" list (A Sheer Printed dress to wear a printed slip under)..I ended up making one...but it didn't work out as well as I planned..well it looks nice but the fabric is horribly uncomfortable. Perhaps I'll give it another try this year!

J. said...

Haha, I love being a college student. My magazines are all in the library's collection. =] But I collect catalogues, so I'm just as bad.

#1 by the way is so pretty.

Linda said...

I just throw em out...I want currency not history...gone bye bye. Paul keeps them, the other day I tried to delicatly tell him that he should let them go and he got all defensive "those are my archives!"....whatever, I chuck em.

Secondhand Stella said...

I keep my Lucky magazines and Country Living. I give the rest to friends to read after I am done w/ them. I also scan pics that I like and save them on my computer.

amanda h. said...

the only magazines i really cling to are old Luckys. their photos still inspire me even a year later. but i'm getting to the point of needing to throw them out, too.

i love the idea of snapping low res photos (for space's sake) and just uploading them and storing them in a computer inspiration folder... then you could super easily organize your favorites in folders by season/year...

Raquelita said...

I used to take them to the gym that I went to, so that other people could read them and enjoy them, but I don't go to the gym anymore (yoga and running instead) so now I just recycle them. That said, I wait until magazines are about to take over certain areas of the house before I get around to doing anything about it.

Anonymous said...

I tear out the pages I love best and put them in my inspiration binder, but give the rest to my hubby. He works in a federal office with a packed waiting room, and they ALWAYS need reading material!

Louise (Fifth Sparrow) said...

Augh! I'm so bad with magazines too...they all want me to take them home! usually only Lucky, Harpers, Vogue and Elle make the cut and don't turn into kindling...but the stacks of old mags in my office make normal people cringe.

By the way, I'm very excited that you're coming to MB, even if its just for a brief trip, we could use a few more fashionable people walking around!
xx

Kristie said...

I'm so like you and love to hold on to my mags forever mainly my In Style to look through over and over again. When I was living in California after I finally felt okay to let some of them go I would swap mags with my next door neighbor, which was SO fun. She and I would never buy the same mag so it was nice to get some mags that I didn't even have to pay for but still enjoyed!

Kasmira said...

I only allow myself to keep two months of magazines in the house. I go through the older issues one last time (cutting out any inspirational photos for my binder) and then donate them to a hospital emergency room or my gym.

I subscribe to Lucky and In Style and buy others at the checkout on occaision.

Chiada said...

I usually keep mine for a couple of months. Once I have two or three months worth of a magazine stacked up, I'll purge the older ones. I was subscribed to Glamour, but I got so sick of all those articles you mentioned... ugh. But I did like reading and seeing pictures of the clothes. I'd like to find a magazine that is more about real fashion and less about relationships. Vogue is too avant garde for me and way out of my budget, so I'd prefer something more average. Any suggestions?

What Would a Nerd Wear said...

oh i totally have this problem, too. here's how i solve it:
i horde magazines for months and months because i can't throw them out because i paid $4 apiece for them. then when my coffee table threatens to collapse, i throw them all out at once, and i dust the now extremely dusty coffee table.
and then i repeat the process.

Kendi Lea said...

i'm so glad to know that someone else out there hordes their magazines. the ones that make the cut? glamour (for the sex tips only, duh) lucky, marie claire, instyle, and allure.

I also have a stack of Domino magazines that I just can't recycle. They date back from the beginning, so for some reason I feel like i need to keep them. But good for you for cleaning out! Let me know if I need to send you my old glamour magazines...

Nadine said...

Obviously I have different magazines to you, being in a different country. Some I keep indefinitely, others get purged when I run out of room. I tear out the pictures I like for my clearfile and then I like to donate them to the high school sewing department. NONE of these are sleazy Cosmo-type ones, though!

(Knitted bodysuit is totally flipping my burger.)

K said...

Funny you say that about Mischa Barton because I just was looking at an InTouch from a couple months ago that had a story about her and her changes.

I try not to get too many magazines but mostly I just recycle them after a few months. I'm trying to do better though about pulling out the pages I like before it gets gone.

Candycane said...

That first dress is gorgeous!!

I have so many magazines back at my mum and dad's all bagged up in my old room!

And a fair collection here - I'm a hoarder - I did a post on this the other day!!

CC xXx

Eyeliah said...

great inspirations, maybe the knit bodysuit in a darker color would be less scary....

Nicki said...

First off, have to say I love your blog! I've been following for a while and your posts always make me laugh =).

I stopped buying Cosmos a looong time ago. It's the same thing every issue! I think I've read "Men's New Sexual Needs," or some variation of it, in every issue I've ever picked up! How many new needs can they possibly have?! =).

Kyla said...

I do the same thing! I have about 5 subscriptions right now and they add up FAST! I love sitting down with a giant heap of them on the weekend and flip through just waiting for best getteral reactions to tell me when to tear something out. I will say, I refuse to buy them at the grocery store anymore. They cost about 25% of the entire one-year subscription. Craziness.

Sidewalk Chic said...

I cried when my mom threw away 5 years' worth of my Glamour and Teen Vogue magazines. She said they were getting a little dusty and why would I want to keep them for so long anyways? If I could, they would take up my whole house.

Julia said...

Ha, so funny that you posted this. I JUST recycled a ton of my old magazines, even ones I swore I'd never get rid of, like some Vogues from 2001 (2001 was a good year for Vogue). But they had to go -- moving means I can't bring dead weight. I figure my dogs are enough :)

Beatrice said...

I keep a couple of old Lucky issues, but I have kept a lot of old (1990s) J. Crew catalogs---oh, the tweed! And I refuse to let go of my Interview issues from the late 80s/early 90s.
My biggest losses have been a John Fleuvog catalog from 1989, and the long-gone Sassy magazine with Johnny Depp on the cover. I CRIED when I lost that one!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Gawd. I'm the worst person to ask. I used to save People's "Best Dressed" issues for years and years. I'm only slightly less of a hoarder now. But I currently have a backlog of about six months, to go through.

I usually toss the magazines and save the pertinent bits. Which I then leave in a pile until I realize I'm never going to do anything useful with them and throw them out too.

Sigh. I love magazines.

Anonymous said...

My mom gets pretty much every swedish fashion magazine so I rarely buy my own (my parents have their own business so the end up there,in the waiting room)

I do buy O magazine, because it's the only magazine that I think have decent articles - and I keep every single one.Right now, I'm having a little bit of a storage problem... I've also kept old issues of seventeen - the magazines I used to buy all those summers we spent in Florida when I was growing up.

GS said...

Oh I like Lucky too! Also, Self and Nylon. They do get pretty pricey though. 4, 5, 6 bucks a pop or more it really adds up. I've been taking mine out from the library lately. Kinda shows how tight I am on money lol.

Jenny said...

I just wrote a post about this...

http://jennychilders.blogspot.com/2010/03/print-media-is-still-in-print.html

Love the photos you kept!