What a nice, organized life you must have, to know you can get your newspaper(s) each and every day, without fail.

OTOH, I really like this idea: “Any magazine you haven’t read that you still want to read, write June 29, 2008, on the cover of the magazine with a magic marker. In a month, if you still haven’t read it, recycle it on the spot.” although in my world a month isn’t enough time.

I had an interesting dilemma: I have the choice of giving my old news magazine to someone at work who would not otherwise buy the mag, or I could recycle it. To date I’ve been giving him the mag. Maybe I should tell him the “price” is to recycle it.

When I’ve finished with them, I write on the cover with a marker: “FREE: take, read, and pass to another person.” Then I leave them on the ticket counter at the Greyhound Bus Station (after first getting permission).

People who ride the bus, in general, have very limited resources. They probably don’t subscribe to anything, and buying a magazine may cost more than they have. In addition, they may have limited reading abilities. Therefore, NatGeos are perfect with all the pictures.

The ticket-counter people know me now and are always happy to see me coming with free reading material.

If you are still on mailing lists and receiving catalogs, those make good give aways, too — just remember to remove all your personal information.

I still prefer physical magazines to getting everything online. I read magazines in lots of places where my computer isn’t!

As for magazines, I am inspired by them, although I try to limit them. I keep a small space for them and when it gets full, I get rid of them.

Ideally you should probably read news online and not have any hard copy newspapers. Then you could just save the articles, etc., that you wanted to keep rather than going to the trouble of scanning them. Plus you’d save the money of buying newspapers – well, some online newspapers might have a subscription fee for some stuff. Anyway.

My dad really needs to learn to purge his magazines. He has subscriptions to at least 20 magazines, most of which are related to fishing, nature, or hunting (he doesn’t hunt, by the way, so it makes no sense). The magazines stack up on the table next to his chair in the den, his bedside table, a 3-foot radius around his bedside table, and his fly-tying room. He goes through and tosses them about once a year, whenever my mom finally complains enough about it, or when the cat goes missing because he’s knocked them over on top of himself and can’t get out (yes, it’s that bad). Just think of all of the money (and trees) he could save by unsubscribing!!!

I agree that recent magazines can be donated – check with your local hospital. My day job is at a pretty large hospital and they have a few drop boxes for magazines (they need to be RECENT though!) that they will place in waiting rooms throughout the facility – radiology, lab, oncology, etc. It’s always annoying to me if I’m waiting forever to be called back and there are magazines from over a year ago – people definitely appreciate the donations.

I also second Catherine – Real Simple is oppressive with their wad of ads. I like the clean design of the piece, but the articles tend to be pimping products, which means even more of it is advertising than the ads!

After a single year, I cancelled Real Simple. I’d love it, if every other page (literally) wasn’t an ad. It’s an embarrassingly wasteful amount of paper and ads for the articles in it… (Sorry Erin! )