I find that magazines are much more useful once you recognize that it is ok to tear pages out of them. Rip out the articles that you think look interesting and take them with you to read while waiting. Once you finish reading an article you can throw it away. An article that you read and toss is worth far more than one sitting on a shelf that you never have time to read.
That’s fine if you’re the only person in the household who reads the magazines. If someone else is waiting, they’re likely to take a dim view of you ripping everything up to suit yourself.
Since I get to the magazines first, I read through them and use Post-It flags to mark any pages that (a) I want to save for useful information or (b) I think my husband would find especially interesting. Then I hand over the magazines to my husband to read. (He’s a much slower reader than I am and seldom finishes a magazine in one sitting, so for us this system is the most efficient.)
After we’re both done with the magazines, we tear out anything we want to save for reference, cut our mailing label off the cover, and put the magazine in a bag to be taken to our medical center’s waiting room. (They always greet us with delight: The magazine people are here!)
um, seriously, tear them up and throw them away as you go? why? if you do that, why not just read magazines you find in waiting rooms and coffee shops? jeez, its so wasteful – the magazines i buy are special to me, and i read and re-read them over many years. this idea just seems kind of stupid.
and who puts a magazine on a shelf with the idea of getting to the articles later anyway? magazines are not heavy tomes, they are quick and easy to read – thats the format, after all. if you dont have time to read them, dont buy them!!!
@infmom – Good point. Most of my magazines are only read by me so that isn’t a problem.
@mia – Reading whatever is handy is fine if you are just reading for entertainment, but if you subscribe to a number of magazines on specific topics picking up People or the airline magazine in a plane, probably isn’t going to give you the same benefit.
While magazines aren’t heavy, when I’m traveling I’d rather have 10 to 20 articles I want to read than 6 or 7 magazines that contain those articles along with a bunch of advertisements and other articles I don’t want to read.
To me a magazine that teaches me something is more useful and less wasteful than one that sits on a shelf. I very rarely read an article (or book for that matter) twice. There are just too many other things I haven’t read.
Interesting views.
I keep all my National Geographics. They never really get old, and I still enjoy reading the ones my parents and grandparents saved.
I get my ‘weighty’ magazines – Time, Fortune, etc – on my Kindle. The ‘fluff’ ones – Parenting, Family Fun, and hobby related magazines – are read once, then I rip out articles or projects that interest me and store them in prtective sleeves in a binder. My daughter gets the remainder of the magazine to “read” and color.
I think this works for most magazines – there’s often only a handful of good articles and then a lot of ads. Keep what you need and purge the rest. Magazines take up a lot of space if you let them though I do have to agree with a few commenters there are some that are nice to keep (National geographic is one that comes to mind)