Thursday, April 2, 2009

I Subscribe to Too Many Magazines

It's April and I've got the spring-cleaning bug! Partly because of that, I've been motivated recently to simplify my life in a number of ways. One of these is that I've decided to cut down on the number of magazines I subscribe to. I subscribe to way too many and it's hard/impossible to find the time to read them all. Organizing experts say to subscribe to no more than three. For now, I'm going to whittle mine down to five. Baby steps! These are the magazines I currently subscribe to:

1. Parents (a good parenting magazine with fun stuff for moms thrown in)

2. Cookie (an upscale (snobby) Manhattan-centric parenting magazine that sells practical things like $500 Burberry coats for your infant)

3. Good Housekeeping (I like it but I think I'm a bit young for its demographic...I don't really need to be reading articles about menopause and hormone replacement therapy yet.)

4. All You (a fun women's magazine that is the complete opposite of #2 above)

5. Time (it helps me to stay on top of the news--when I get a chance to read it, which isn't all that often. It comes every week, and some of the articles are long and boring.)

6. Family Fun (a good family magazine with crafts that I'll never do but some fun ideas and articles anyway)

7. Brain, Child (an intellectual magazine for mothers. Some of the articles are written by very liberal women whose viewpoints sometimes make me mad but also make me think. This magazine requires me to use my brainpower more than most of the others. And that's a good thing, right?)

8. The Ensign (my church's monthly magazine. This one's not going anywhere! It's by far the most valuable to me.)

9. Plus the free extras--like our alumni magazine and other magazines and newsletters for various organizations that we belong to (like AAA, which has some great travel articles)

So, I've decided that these ones are getting cut: Time (too time-consuming--no pun intended), Good Housekeeping (too old for me right now), and All You (too repetitive and basic). If I'm really missing one of them after awhile, I'll re-subscribe but end my subscription to another one. This leaves me with mostly parenting and family magazines, but that's okay because that's the stage of life I'm in right now. Aaaah, that felt good!

Do you have a favorite magazine? And are you doing anything to simplify your life this spring?