I have always loved magazines: shiny, glossy, matte, A3, A4, handbag size – I don’t discriminate. In my late teens I realised I had a problem disposing of anything, magazines in particular. They were filed under a kind of ‘psychological protection’ in my mind, similar to an endangered species or a conservation area.
Fashion magazines, free magazines, supermarket magazines, art exhibition pamphlets. All sacred. Any kind of printed material really with the slightest hint of something interesting about it or a pretty image. To save space, I decided to start ripping out the key pages, images, hottest tips and inspiring adverts. This was a mistake. I ripped out more pages than were left!
It was around this time that I realised that the free magazine that came with my Dad’s Saturday newspaper was a real hit for culture, art, interiors, imagery, key interviews, upcoming events, designers, fashion…it was The Telegraph Magazine. On my instruction, he started saving these (weekly) tomes of all things covetable, and before I knew it, I was drowning in printed information.When I started university and had no spare time to spend ripping and processing, untouched (and often unread) magazines and cuttings began mounting up. They lived between my student flat (admittedly, a beautiful town house which is probably the best house I have ever lived in with the largest bedroom I have ever had), my Mum’s flat in Glasgow and my Dad’s house up North. It was a paper explosion, and a truly insurmountable task for even the Christmas holidays.
Every now and then, I would attempt a mini-cull of my spiralling ‘habit’. Always I would panic about missing out on something really amazing; quite what exactly I’m not sure.
Cut to about 5 years ago. Magazines and cuttings multiplied under the bed, in every cupboard and in boxes in the hall. Friends seemed happy to dump their stash, cut loose and start over. Not me. I was still chasing the rainbow.
At one point I was unemployed for 6 months. This provided the perfect opportunity to make in-roads to my mammoth task. I started to file things in large folders according to various emerging categories: fashion, interiors, interviews, writing, health… This really helped to get some perspective, sort the wheat from the chaff. But it still wasn’t enough.
I carried on in my merry way, even taking on new magazine subscriptions which only served to compound the issue. When I moved in with my boyfriend (now husband) and told him I had a LOT OF STUFF, he didn’t understand; couldn’t quite comprehend the enormity of my words.
When we moved into our first flat together, up 7 flights of stairs, it nearly killed him. Magazines are heavy. We needed 2 large vans for my ‘essentials’, while he had a few binbags and a box of food from the fridge. We had fitted wardrobes and a spare room – it was fine. The deep wardrobe space kept my precious magazines safe from the recycling bin for at least 4 years.
Then we moved into our first proper home. Got a mortgage and everything. We’ve got 3 bedrooms. You could bring up a family in a home like ours; but not with my archives of a decade. I decided something had to be done, so ruthlessly I have taken on the necessary role of magazine editor. Not in the sense that I always imagined myself – working in London at Vogue House for example – but actually trying to edit down my prized collection of magazines and cuttings.
Before I even started I made a promise to myself – no copies of Vogue would be harmed in this exercise. They have been preserved on my bookshelf, in no particular order. I had to allow myself something.
Instead, inferior titles, non-entities and random pamphlets with no lasting relevance were consigned to the big blue bin of paper death. I still had Telegraph Magazine’s from 2005. They had to go. I had to stop the rot.
With a few months of ‘distance’ I feel free, relieved of this never-ending burden. But what will happen to the priviledged pages I deigned to keep?
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