Out with the old

Yesterday was the day to get rid of some things in my home. Staring me in the face was a huge shelving unit bursting with 15 years of Martha Stewart Living magazines – their spines shouting out every aspirational topic that the hobbyist, crafter and home enthusiast could imagine. What I was really staring at was a huge opportunity – some extra basement storage.

What I do every day with my clients is this: we determine an item’s value by adding up the joy it brings to life and subtracting the pain that it represents. Time to do that.

• The joy: the gorgeous photography and consistently thoughtful writing.
• The pain: the guilt associated with never looking at them, the amount of dust they collect and the space they take up.

What would I be missing if I let go of these teetering stacks? I pulled 10 random issues and flipped to one page at random out of each. Here is what I found.

5 how-to articles:

• take perfect pictures of your garden
• transport your dress to your destination wedding (solution: buy a seat for it!)
• make a slipcover for your 3-seater sofa with cushions
• create a fabulous holiday dessert buffet
• repair your window screens.

3 recipes:

• citrus marinated quail
• real pumpkin pie
• tiradito (you know… sushi made from red snapper, topped with cilantro and a dot of ajipanca, a Peruvian chile paste).

2 informational articles:

• facts about MSG
• holiday greenery glossary (mistletoe, blue cedar, boxwood, etc.).

For this reader, I choose the joy of the present moment and my family’s need for space and serenity over the myriad ideas and luscious photography… that of course I never look at. How much joy could these pages bring to someone else?

So I donated them to ArtStart, a non-profit creative materials reuse store in St. Paul, MN. In professional organizer speak, that’s “meaning-matched dispossession.” My collection of craft magazines go to crafters and school kids who can make greeting cards with it.

Yeah, this stuff needed a new owner. Am I the same person that I was when I had my monthly subscription? No. I have a house now and a family and a million things on the list. I have no plans to make quail and my husband fixes our screens. I might try making the real pumpkin pie though… glad I photocopied that.