Oh yeah, Sally! Been there, done that. It was like pulling teeth but I just had to do something. I wound up mostly donating to Habitat for Humanity, because in our area they are one of the few who will accept magazines. I just tore off my name and address and bagged them in plastic grocery bags. You wouldn't believe how many I have accumulated since then. I did save a lot of the food/cooking magazines but very few of anything else. I had every issue of Country Living along with tons of others.

I did save some gardening magazines though. And...since I started coming to this forum I find myself getting recipes here instead of cookbooks, which I have hundreds of, or magazines. Mostly these recipes are T&T and it's so much quicker.

God luck!

jude

Oh Sally, I can sympathize with you.

I can't tell you how many times I've moved my cookbook collection and food magazines, dating back to the early 1970's. I hate to even think about what I've paid to the moving companies. I had over 2,000 magazines, Cuisine, Food & Wine, Canadian Living, Bon Appetite, Gourmet, Chocolate, and many others. I basically stopped buying magazines when we moved to Vancouver back in 1998. I had run out of room.

Over the last two year I finally sorted the cookbooks and got them down to 12 shelves in two book cases and got rid of all but six shelves worth of food magazines.

I gave the cookbooks to Matt and Dana to choose from and they in turn let their friends choose and what was left, Dana took to the hospital and left them for her fellow nurses to pick through.

It was difficult to do, but necessary.

Ann

I am working on the very same project today :-( Fortunately, I have a dear friend that is just developing and interest in cooking, she will get many years worth of Bon Appetit magazines later today. Boxes and boxes of them. Any recipes I want from them I copied from Epicurious to my Word files so I can part with the hard copies.

Cookbooks I am still keeping.

Alexa

In recent years I have come to the conclusion that everyone should move every 10 years or so, thinking it would make you get rid of some things. We have lived in this house for 43 years. Several years ago, we built a 4 room 28 x 28 ft. workshop, half of which is insulated, with a bathroom. It has now become a repository for everything we don't want to deal with. That's where the excess magazines etc. currently reside. We also added a 14 x 22, heated and cooled, studio for me that I no longer use for that purpose. Makes a nice place for wrapping during the holidays.LOL Totally out of control, me thinks.:)

jude

Pam (dedtired) turned me on to Paperbackswap.com, and cookbooks tend to be in demand there. If you don't want any books for yourself you can donate your 'points' to the military. I loaded their mobile app onto DH's iphone, and have been known to go through book sales scanning barcodes to see who is 'wishing' for books, LOL.

There may be someone on the 'Organizing The Home' forum who might have ideas for the magazines.

I had 30 years of Gourmet from the '70's to the early 2000's when I stopped liking it. A couple of years ago I spent a lot of time going through them, finding recipes I wanted and looking to see if they were on the Epicurious website. (Most were not.) All because I could not bear to cut them up! After I went through them I gave almost all to my son. I still have many left with recipes I want, plus a box of "one recipe" issues to go through. I was struck by how much better that magazine was in the earlier years of my collection.

Our local library has almost no budget for periodicals, so I donate mine to them when I'm finished with them. It gets them out of the house without just throwing them out, and others can enjoy them as well. And if I need to refer back to them they're right there, just storing them is now someone else's problem :-) Reader's Digests go to the old folks' home up the street :-)
I started doing that about 10 years ago when I was planning a move that didn't happen in the end.

There is a shop near me that sells old magazines starting at $1/issue. It has everything - Rolling Stone back to the 1970s, Gourmet and Bon Appetit from the 1970s, some stuff from the 1960s, hundreds or thousands of titles from knitting to model trains, sports to woodworking. I find it an incredible resource. You could look for a place like that and sell your magazines. Or, knowing that such a place exists could make it easier to cut up or discard your magazines. Personally, I keep Cooks Illustrated, not other cooking magazines.

I'm trying to limit my cookbooks and cooking magazines to a small bookcase of about 12 linear feet. This means that I can have a few cookbooks on each topic - seafood, or pasta, or soup, or Thai - plus a few of the encyclopedic books (Joy of, Larousse, etc), a few thematic books (cooking for lovers, for dieters, for vegetarians, etc), not too many special-purpose books (a book on roesti, a book on chocolate), plus the magazines and, unfortunately, the books that should be discarded but can't be, for sentimental reasons.

John, you have Powells. Nuff said.

Sell your house and move to a small cottage...drastic but it works!

When we decided we would sell our home and likely end up between the cottage and a condo I knew there was no choice, but it was so hard!

Like Alex I kept all my cookbooks, save a few I gave to Amity and Meredith. Cookbooks that I felt were special and timeless but didn't use myself anymore.

Then there were the magazines...oy! When I think of what I have spent on magazines I shudder!

Anyhow I bit the bullet this winter and took all my mags to the cottage....boxes and boxes. I sat for hours in front of my fireplace, sipping red wine, flipping through the mags and really thinking about what I was likely to make and what I wasn't likely to make.

I cut out those recipes that I thought I might make some day (not that I will) and placed them in seven photo albums, each with it's own subject.... appetizers, soups and salads, main courses, breakfast/brunch, BBQ and Smoker, breads and desserts.

I now have seven binders and maybe 50-75 magazines because you need to keep some for night time reading and bath tub flipping!

I heaved several boxes of Gourmet magazines into the recycle bin 11 years ago during a move when I was exhausted and couldn't deal with another box to move. :( I should have found a home for them but didn't have the time or energy.

I Freecycled (www.freecycle.org) a half dozen or so boxes of Martha Stewart, Bon Appetit, and other magazines a couple of years ago to a grateful recipient. I use Freecycle whenever I have possibly useful items that need to go away. I occasionally hold a garage but I'm not fond of doing so.

I have a small stack of Cuisine magazines that I keep for sentimental reasons. They are from the early 80s when I first began becoming interested in cooking. Cuisine was published for a very short time.

I no longer subscribe to any magazines.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cuisine magazine back issues.

Sally, I know how hard it is but with the internet there really is no need to hang on to older magazines and most older cookbooks. I understand your pain much too well.

I hate to admit it but I have over 1000 cookbooks to sort through and I'd like to get rid of many. Kim doesn't want to get rid of any. So, I put at least 500 out in the garage to prove they were not needed. Neither of us has missed them, so soon they will be gone. Except for a few, all the magazines are going. I know I'll feel better and maybe feel less guilty when I see a new one I want to read.....

Nancy

I'm happy to join this "support group"! It's very much of an issue with me right now, both cooking magazines and cookbooks.

I have been throwing out all renewal subscription as they arrive; when we last moved I got rid of 400+ cookbooks but kept 600+. In my business travel, I would buy a cookbook from where ever I was working (anyone need "Cornsilk" from the Junior League of Sioux City, Iowa?). I would date the cookbook and read it on the plane home marking recipes of interest. Thankfully, it's been several years since I have bought a cookbook, except "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day".

Jessy, I'll check out Paperbackswap.com. The Organized Home forum doesn't have any definitive resolutions to the problem--that's my second fav forum but it's been really slow for almost a year.

Hey Sally! If you have circa 2002 Family Circle mags, don't toss them just yet! I was featured in one of the July issues as part of the 'Dwarf Citrus' centerpiece. :-)

Oh, I don't think I do, Unorthodox. I wasn't as into Family Circle as I was Women's Day. I don't know why. I haven't read either of them since I went back to work in the '90's. What bugs me is that I used to have a Woman's Day that had the best apple pie recipe I've ever made, called Brown Sugar Apple Pie. I managed to lose that issue. It was also from the late '80's I'm pretty sure.

I see I'm not alone in this problem. I don't have a problem figuring out where to donate the magazines, as the library takes them. It's just the letting go that gets me, and the cutting up. I have to say, there was one Bon Appetit special issue about chocolate that I thought I'd cut those recipes out, and someone had already beat me to it. It was one of the 10 cent magazines from the library. We didn't even get our 10 cents worth from it, lol. At least that one I had no trouble throwing away.

Sally

Remember the year of the Bon Appetit chocolate issue? I might have it. Epicurious keeps an excellent online library of their recipes, by the way. If you find that Brown Sugar Apple Pie recipe, please share.

Good luck.
ajh

You all are crazy!! LOL. My mom does the same thing -- zillions of cookbooks and old magazines. She can't toss a magazine unless she has thoroughly reviewed it. I always figure if its been on the coffee table a couple months and I haven't read it, I'm not likely to read it and out it goes. Recycle.

I'm afraid it will be up to me to get rid of Mom's cookbooks. Don't know what I will do with them, but they're not coming into my house. I have winnowed mine down to the ones I actually use.

No one will ever accuse me of being a hoarder. I toss stuff out or give it away and then once in awhile I wish I still had it. But not often.

I did have a large envelope of clipped recipes that I decided if I hadn't made them in twenty years, I was never going to make them so I chucked the whole thing. Ahhh! I love clearing out.

I boxed up a bunch of books and magazines, meaning to take them to the library for their used book sale. Never got around to it and when I discovered the box again, I decided I still wanted the books! I have a serious book addiction. I am not allowed to go into any bookstores anymore. And I can't go to Amazon.com either! Last week I went to Borders on my way home, (had to check out my favorite bookstore before it was Gone With the Wind). Boy was that a mi$take! (But they were all half price!) I also have a problem with gardening books, as well as cooking ones. And I have about 300 recipes in my "To Try" files, lol! BF does not understand this, he likes to cook the same dishes that he likes every week.

''John, you have Powells. Nuff said.''

We have been selling our basement full of books to Powells. When daughter-san needs a recharge of her Powell's card, she brings out a box of books, I select the keepers, and we sell what Powells will take, the rest go to Goodwill.

I can now visit Powells and recognize some of my old books on the shelves.

''Hi, old friend'', I say.

''Who the h*ll are you?'' they respond.

Turns out that we don't mean
as much to our material objects
as we think they mean to us.

My books live at the library and food lives at the grocery store. Both are within four blocks of my home. Let them deal with it!

Well you can try watching a few episodes of the TV show "Hoarders"!!! That should help get you motivated. You'll never be able to read 20 years worth of magazines no matter how much you love them.
Joann

Sally:
I take all old Magazines and Books to the VA Hospital,
In Wilkes Barre, Pa.

They put them in the Library and around the waiting rooms,
for the veterans to read.

All Books are appreciated, no matter how old.

I do not bring Cook Books.

In the last couple of years I must have brought enough to fill a pickup truck.

I just leave them at the ER and the Library is called to take them up.

If you do not have a VA Hospital near you, a Vet, or member of the VFW may take them for you.

LOU

When I got my kindle, the local library took almost all of my books (I kept a few)...cookbooks and others. They love to get books of any kind. With budget cuts nowadays, they never have enough funds. They either put them on the shelves or sell them in the store.
Either way...they are out of my house and I have lots of valuable home storage real estate to use for other things!

Add me to the list of magazine & cookbook collectors who "can't let go."
I'm pretty neat & organized, but the stacks of cooking and shelter magazines in my closets and attic are my guilty secret.
I start to look through them to discard and become even more attached to each one I've kept.

I too love magazines and cookbooks. My magazines are like new. I hate to tear pages out of them.

If you have a Freecycle in your area, people will gladly pick up your unwanted magazines and books. They are hot tickets in our area.

I don't throw any newspapers, magazines etc in the blue recycle bin. Our Humane Society has a dumpster where everyone can throw paper into. The company pays them, so it's a donation to the Humane Society.

Joanne, I agree about Hoarders. Every time I come across that show, I watch ten minutes, then get up and start cleaning. It has that effect on me!

By the way, the library may not want your old books unless they are having a book sale. Most libraries don't have enough space for their current location -- space is always an issue. Library collections are created with a great deal of thought and old books that may no longer be relevant are of no use. Libraries are short of staff and they do not have time to sort through stacks of donated books. If you want to donate books, ask the librarian first if they can use them -- don't drop them off or stick them in the book drop.

I will get off my soapbox now, but I have worked and volunteered in libraries for more than 30 years and believe me, most donated books are a big headache.

All I have to do is watch one episode of "Hoarders" and by the time the second one comes on, I am picking up piles of old mags and tossing them. If I haven't touched it in 6 months, it now gets tossed.

That's funny about watching Hoarders and getting up to clean. I should try that! Even better, I should make my DIL watch it!

Dedtired, you're right about book donations to the library. In our system, there's a non-profit organization called Friends of the Library that handles most of the book donations, and pretty much all of the books that are donated are put in the annual book sale, not on the shelves of the library. Magazines that are donated go into the 10 cent pile. Believe it or not, they throw away a good number of the books that are donated, so I underline what Dedtired said about asking first before donating. Your used book store would be a more likely place to use the books, or a homeless shelter.

I do use my library for fiction, and for cookbooks a lot, too. It's estate sales that push my impulse button. I bought 3 cookbooks at the last estate sale I went to.

What I hope to do is to go back through those magazines and make some of the recipes to see if I still like them. Then I'll decide whether to keep them or not. Or so I say, anyway!

Sally

I have never had a subscription to a cooking magazine - the only subscription I did have was to Illuminatrice, an Italian lighting magazine, and that was at work. The only magazines that I buy at the newsstand are Italian design magazines, some of which are quite expensive (I used to buy men's Italian fashion magazines, when I was more fashionable), and I have saved every one of them. I also buy Architectural Digest, Interiors, Veranda, etc. when they publish photos of my furniture designs, and I keep these also. My old magazine collection takes up one shelf in my garage, and I do refer to the Italian magazines from time to time for inspiration. I do collect clutter, but books and magazines are not part of that. I have one shelf of cookbooks in the hall next to the kitchen. I once bought a magazine on Feng Shui, but I decided that the magazine was clutter and got rid of it.

I spent last week-end trying to declutter my bedroom because I also bought a new mattress that will be delivered tomorrow, and I want my room to look nice. Yesterday I made a runner with the fabric left over from making new drapes for my bedroom (to be able to block out light) and put it on the wide dresser beside my bed. The dresser on the other side of my bed has a runner I made from fabric left over from when I made my bedspread. I find that decorating or trying to coordinate rooms helps me get rid of clutter. However, I did put a bunch of books on the wide dresser using bookends. I don't have room for another bookcase. If I need to get more books, I will get rid of old ones that I have. Lately I have been buying and reading books on Anthropology and early human evolution. I read them at night to help me get to sleep, and so it takes a while to get through them.

I cannot stand to watch Hoarders, but I will watch Clean House if I need inspiration to declutter. Making my house and yards look as beautiful as possible is one of my top priorities, and this helps me let go of clutter. I haven't gotten rid of it altogether, however, and so I think it is an on-going process. I have a hard time getting rid of old clothes that no longer fit, and I am convinced that sometime in the near future, they will fit again. Anyway, that is my goal. They may be terribly out of style or inappropriate by that time, however. Getting rid of old clothes is my biggest problem.

One of the things I came across yesterday while decluttering was a printout from a Cooking Forum thread from 2005 that I started asking what was in everyone's freezer. It included a post by Ann_T on pitahaya (I happened to have some in my freezer at the time) that she had copied and pasted, bad Google translation and all. The translation was hysterically funny.

Lars

Lars, I am the same way about clothes. I hang on to things that are just a little too tight, because I am SURELY going to lose weight and start dieting. Sadly, I even have clothes with the tags still on them. My closet is stuffed and I'm sure I wear only half of it. I wish they would do a Clothes Hoarder episode to inspire me to clean out.

We lost power during Hurricane Irene and everything in the freezer melted. I did cook a few things, but it forced me to do a major clean out and most of the food really needed to be tossed.

Okay, gotta go clean now.

Sally, many of Woman's Day recipes are on line.

There is a recipe for Old Fashioned Apple Pie and the filling is made with brown sugar. Not sure if it is the same recipe that you are looking for. I've noticed that some times same recipes get reprinted with different names.

I went through the Woman's Day magazines issues that I still had from 1993 to 1999 but no Brown Sugar Apple Pie recipe.

Ann

Hello, my name is Kathy and I collect cookbooks and magazines too...

I agree with whoever said we should all move about once every 10 years. Unfortunately for me, we moved to a BIGGER house with lots and lots of room. Oh, the possibilities!

BUT, I have found that over the years I probably have a recipe for almost anything I could possibly want to make, so I don't buy cookbooks as often; however, keep me away from Amazon.com!

As far as magazines go, I mark the recipes I want and copy them on the printer. After that, I give the magazines away to doctor's offices or retirement homes. The copied recipes then go into one of 6 large binders, which are getting too big!!! Ahem. I've also canceled all my magazine subscriptions because that was just too enabling.

Just brought another small box of Books and Magazines to the VA Hospital, for their Library.
I get a good feeling when helping Vets, that are worst off than I am.
When I see some of them, I say to myself " Lou , you are lucky ".

When my wife went with me,a few years ago, she would go around talk to all of them.

LOU

Pam, you're right, I'm sick. (grin) I have piles of magazines on my endtables and more in boxes. Not just cooking magazines either. Right now I have Grit, Hobby Farms, Saveur, Organic Gardening, Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, and Horse Illustrated, LOL. I'll read 'em now that winter is coming.

Since I don't have TV, I can't watch Hoarders, and I did sell a bunch of my cookbooks at a yard sale a couple of years ago. I gave some to Amanda and some to Ashley. Now Elery has been bringin HIS to my house! My basement has everything from a collection of Sherlock Holmes to Edgar Allen Poe to Kipling and Dickens. Oh, and Anne of Green Gables and Lord of the Rings, LOL. I have the Treasury of Lynne Truss sitting next to my lamp in the living room right now. I love books. Dad used to tell me that he could give me $5 and drop me at a used bookstore and I'd be occupied for hours...

Magazines after being read go to Amanda, who gives them to my stepmother, who gives them back to me to give to my mother, who eventually takes them to the hospital waiting room. They get well read, LOL.

Print it on a page and I'll read it, eventually. That's why I don't have TV, I'd much rather read anyway! My kids think I'm nuts, so I'm not telling them about Pam's opinion.

Annie