Sunday, November 30, 2008

Culling old woodworking magazines

I have saved all of the issues of the various wood magazines that I have subscribed to over the years. They now fill a large storage cabinet and overflow onto the table top. Any useful reference articles or projects that appealed to me were copied and put in notebooks. While most of the magazines are neatly arranged by date and magazine title, I have never referred to them after filing them for information or ideas unless I was disposing of older issues. So, I have decided there is little value in saving the entire magazines.
I am culling through issues from the 1990's and coming to an understanding of why the accumulated magazines are unused. As I look through the magazines I am noticing how many projects are out-dated, e.g. media centers for deep televisions, and how repetitious the projects are - hundreds of plans for Adirondack chairs and saw horses. Plus, it is really time consuming to leaf through an entire magazine hoping to find a particular reference. So, after culling several years of two magazines I have a stack of articles about an inch high that I believe are worth saving. A much more usable pile of information.
I am pleased to get rid of this burden but, as I get closer to more current issues, I am sensing I will have more difficulty making the call to save or throw out. But, in the short term, at least now I will be able to store all of the magazines in the cabinet.

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