Trying New Things: Decluttering

I am actually a big fan of decluttering.  I can't stand having items in the house no one uses, and I'm not the kind of person who keeps something because it might be useful one day.  It needs to be useful today or it's gone.  Except books.  Books I hoard.

I had a blind spot where magazines were concerned.  Every month between "Suburban Parent", "Dallas Child", "Frisco Style", "Living", "Natural Awakenings" and all the other magazines that land in my box or that I grab for free, I was becoming quite the magazine hoarder.  The problem is I read most of them the first day they are in the house then keep them because there are two or three articles I want to reference in the future for information.  This was taking up too much space.

My new plan worked much better.  As I'm reading a magazine, I flag articles I want to keep and come back to cut them out when I finish.  I made a bulletin board to keep the articles on so they are easy to reference.  If the articles are many pages long, I just staple them together and place them in the newly organized file cabinet.  This way I can recycle the magazines and not have to find places to put them.  Plus, there is a much better chance I'm actually going to look at the articles I was interested in because I know where they are and can see them.  Keeping 50 magazines, I never went back and looked at the information I was once interested in.

Overall result:  Good and much more practical

Also, just for fun, here's a link to another song on the Asher and Eowyn playlist.  It was a Pandora discovery last year, and I love it.  It's haunting and perfect and the voices of the singers mesh in a unique style.