Creativity Monday: What to do with my old craft magazines?

I love my magazines.

I mean, I really love my magazines.

Art magazines, craft magazines, stamping magazines, fashion magazines…I love the photos, the projects, the colors, the excitement of opening the page to see what’s new this month? I love the smell of magazines and the feeling of the glossy paper. I can’t quite wrap my head around digital issues; intellectually, I get why they’re great but I just don’t want to relax with my computer since I’m on it a lot during the day. I want to turn real pages, fold over corners and stick it in my purse.

So the result is that I have rather a lot of magazines. Especially craft magazines.

I *knew* I had a cupboard full of old issues, but then I was looking for something upstairs and found another cupboard with even more. Magazines I had completely forgotten about. A lot of them.

At a certain point it starts to feel less like inspiration and more like, well…Hoarders.

This weekend I decided I had to get a handle on them.

So I’m culling through them, one by one. Fortunately, I tag pages as I read the first time around, so I went back to those pages, checked to see if I was still captivated by whatever was on the page, then tore it out and put it in a sheet protector. I’ll pop these in a 3-ring binder as kind of a DIY idea book. It’s going to be a slow process since I’m doing a couple magazines each day, but progress nonetheless.

Why do I save so many of these? Well, living in Poland, I either get my magazines by (expensive) international subscriptions, or I stock up whenever I go to the States or the UK, thus ensuring the heaviest luggage possible. I guess I feel like I have an investment that I don’t want to throw out! If I lived in an English-speaking country, I would pass them on to others…but there’s not much opportunity for sharing them around here. So the only answer (other than lugging them around for the rest of my days) is to clip and recycle.

So that’s what I’m doing. It feels liberating, frankly.

Then I wondered: What do other crafters do with their similar stashes? So I asked on Facebook, and here’s what others said:

– Clip and toss

– Upcycle (for mixed media, art journaling, stamping, cards)

– Pass on (to friends, daycare, senior centers, hospitals, schools). Beth made a good point and said to clip off the address labels if you pass them on.

– And Sandy (“The Enabler”) suggested: “Save some for craft projects with kids — search on Pinterest for ideas”. I’m terrified to check Pinterest because I know I’ll see about twenty ideas that will inspire me to pull everything out of the recycling bin. I mean, just look here.

And at least two people who confessed to simply hoarding them. (Thank you.)

So tonight, I’m back to my pile of magazines. Well, one of the piles. Hopefully that cupboard will be empty soon!

Happy Monday!