I would keep as many as you can. I have a small box inside are pieces of paper with a title of quilt magazine and page on. When not sure what to do I take a lucky dip. Also I have been quilting a few years and have found my interest in which quilt to make changes as I can do more quilts be one more skilled, and my age changes and requirements and circumstances also change.

I keep mine. I don't buy a ton either though. I have done lots of magazine patterns. My taste changes so I don't want to throw them out. I thought about tearing out all the patterns and tossing the advertisments

I LOVE quilt mags but my house was getting shabby looking with mags everywhere and no storage ideas. Well last year I found a hand held scanner at Walmart. It uses a small SIM card that is used in a camera. No need to connect directly to a computer. I scanned the patterns and instructions onto the SIM card then transferred the SIM card to my computer. I set up a file on the desktop. I arranged them by style (or however you want in able to find your design). You can then burn them to a cd or to a thumb drive. The scanner was less then $100.00, it is very easy to use. A little bit of a learning curve to hold it steady and slid it over the page at the correct speed, but since the mags have been sitting in boxes for years, why hurry? I have found that I now scan new mags as I purchase ( not as many as I used to). I only scan the patterns I want and sometimes an article if it is something of interest or a new method i may want to try. The scanner is about 13 inches wide and about 2 inches thick. Packs into a small case and will fit nicely into a drawer or into my computer bag (nice to take traveling). Can be used to also scan your receipts for your taxes. I actually have a larger one for that job, but since we travel a great deal, I do not forget to scan those receipts.

A few years back I went through several years of quilting magazines and picked out the magazines that contained something I was interested in making. I made a list of the quilt name, which magazine it was in (name of mag., month and year) then filed these complete magazines by name and date on a tall bookcase with my list laying on top of them. I then gave away all the other magazines to a couple of friends whom do not have the funds for subscriptions. Since I do like to pass magazines along I don't like to tear out pages. In another year or so I may divide again and I would not like to give someone a magazine that was not complete.

I keep them when there is something in them I really like/love. I do not tear them apart. I do keep all of the Christmas/seasonal issues. I have kept every issue of "Quilt Sampler" magazines because I love seeing the quilt shops they feature in every issue.

Any magazines I do not keep I set them aside until I have a dental or doctor appointment then I leave a few there in the waiting room.

I always put Post-It Notes on the pages of the quilts I want to make and then put the magazines up on my shelves. This is such a great idea that I am going to take down my magazines and photocopy all my pages I stuck Post-It Notes on. Thanks for the great idea. I'm going to keep my magazines - I can't bear to throw them away!!

I keep emailing the publishers of a quilt mag I have taken for years to PLEASE put an online search index out so we can look up some of these quickly. Even publishing a yearly index would help. Of course, I am a computer dummy but it seems in this day of digital technology, it should be an easy thing to do. (maybe this is wishful thinking) Wonder if we would keep encouraging our favorite magazines to do this it would take hold and happen??

I also got all my DM's and some are very old. I really love to go back to those for patterns from the past. I take so many now I can't possibly keep them all so I take out the ones I like and put in a binder. I just can't bring myself to throw away those older ones Mom had.

Some of the first magazines I got I put a post it note on things I might want to make. Went through these a while back and can't believe what I thought was a must then and now no way. We change as quilting does.

A few years back I took out patterns I wanted from stacks of quilt mags and put them in a binder. Sold bunches of mags on eBay and discarded the rest.

Got my binders out the other day to look for a pattern for a line of fabrics I love and only found one. The rest just didn't appeal to me any more.

Hmm I was surprised by that.