The school year is coming to a close and I'm starting my annual ritual of cleaning. Of course, everything looks particularly bad right now ... in fact, it looks like a tornado swept through every room!
Well, in the middle of all the books and school supplies, I've come across years of magazines that I've been saving. I have so many years of Martha Stewart Living I've lost count. I've got loads and loads of Cooking Light, Country Living Gardener, Food and Wine, Country Gardens, Cottage Living, Real Simple, etc.
I almost had to wipe away a little tear as I realized it's time I throw them all away. Yes, *sniff*, it's sad. But really, they are all the same. After you've subscribed to a magazine for a few years, you realize the same articles are shaken out, rewritten a bit, new photos are used for a fresh look and then they're printed time and again. In all fairness, how many different ways can you carve and decorate a pumpkin? Yet, just wait, next October, all the magazines will instruct us once again on how to do it in a "new" and fascinating way!
Once you've gotten a year's worth of gardening magazines, you pretty much know how to take care of tender perennials in the winter ... when to put them back out in the spring ... how to divide and propagate ... which plants will bloom when, etc.
I'm sneezing as I write this ... from all the dust from the magazines I've never referred to again ... not even once! I never needed that special recipe I thought I would from Cooking Light or Food and Wine. I've never gone back to re-read my gardening magazines, either ... well, o.k., maybe once ... that time when I thought how neat it would be to make that living wreath out of wire and sphagnum moss ... it turned out not to be a good idea to hang it on the house, though. You should have seen the mildew growing on the boards when I took the wreath down to water it!
Do I really need to save the Real Simple issue on what to do with day-old bread??? Our bread doesn't even last a day! And to tell you the truth, Cottage Living just always made me mad. I mean, I'm tired of looking at those people's darling little cottage homes with their perfectly manicured lawns that end in a sparkling, natural-looking pool. Have you ever noticed that all their lovely furniture looks as if it's never been sat upon? It would be really refreshing to read a magazine that had photos of sloppy rooms, unmade beds, clothes piled up waiting to be folded and a sink full of dirty dishes for a change!
I subscribed to Body and Soul for awhile, but then realized that most articles included yoga, meditation and natural foods. I like yoga, but my knees crackle and pop when I sit cross-legged. Forget head rolls, too. My neck makes these strange crunchy sounds when I start to rotate. Somehow it's difficult to meditate with all that noise going on.
Yes, I must be brave. I must take a deep breath (after I dust them off) and get the recycling bin. I must be tough on myself. After all, I've just subscribed to Simply Knitting and I just know I'm going to have to save all of those. You never know when I might need another sock pattern!
2 comments:
Funny you should be doing this now -- I just emptied a two foot stack of magazines that I am ashamed to say have resided in the corner of my living room all year!! I think I saved three or four of them out of the stack, and now the recycle box is full.
I try to cull magazines about twice a year, and like you, I hate to throw away all those great recipes. But I have found that I can access Cooking Light's recipe file online. Today I remembered there was some kind of mocha cake recipe that was really good last summer....and searched for it on the CL website, and had it printed out in five minutes. You know it would have taken me hours if I'd tried to find it in my old magazine pile.....
Keep up the good work! Maybe you should invest in a dust mask???
Love the tea set! I, too, try to get rid of magazines. I try to discipline myself to read it through, tear out what I want to keep and chuck the magazine. Except for knitting mags of course. I NEED everyone of those LOL.
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