Stacked Up

One or more magazines arrive monthly and are scanned, or not, and plopped onto a pile of other unread magazines.  My Yoga Journal met this similar fate after its second 2-year renewal.  Does your Better Homes and Garden, National Geographic, Southern Living, or Time Magazine, for example, get treated like this too?  My five reasons magazines may mount up: 

1.  National Geographic may be like classic cars:  occasionally taken out, opened up, dusted off, and then put back.  Why?  Interest in them may be low.

2.  The new Sports Illustrated arrives in the morning and by afternoon the comfy couch beckons the receiver to rest and read.  The article's first paragraph gets read because it grabs your attention.  Then...the magazine slides off your lap and slithers to the floor, in a heap.  Nodding off requires repetitive rereading.

3.  The new Golf magazine joins its mates on the coffee table.  Your lifelong subscription and lack of actual golfing makes reading it unimportant in your busy life.

4.  The last, and previous issues of Better Homes and Garden nest in a basket by your chair.  Several weeks pass, and then, a telephone solicitor offers a new-subscriber rate--hooked!

5.  Throwing away or recycling magazines feels like throwing away money.

My thoughts about magazine reading and recycling

1.  Do you save magazines because you may read them in the future?  Maybe you won't.

2.  Check out this National Geographic website for reuse of this magazine.

3.  Keep a magazine in your vehicle for road repaving standstills, doctor's appointment waits, or friends delayed.  It makes the time pass pleasantly.

4.  Give your previous month's magazine to a friend when the new edition arrives, or try these tips for recycling magazines.

5.  Let go of guilt about reading your magazines.  Lehmkuhl and Lamping suggest, in their book, Organizing for the Creative Person, "...Stop everything and decide either to do it and forget it, or not to do it and forget it, and not feel guilty...."