What do you do with your old magazines?

I am a magazine junkie. Currently, my husband and I get about 5 subscriptions in the mail each month. Those don’t include the ones my mother gives me that she subscribes to.

For the longest time, I saved my old magazines and tried to give them away to people who might be interested. But no one was interested. Not even when I offered them up on Craigslist.com.

Some magazines should go well on Craigslist.com. If you get a subscription to a magazine dedicated to something niche and specific (guitar playing, woodworking, knitting, etc.), there very well could be an audience.

My fashion and home magazines have not garnered any interest. I ended up recycling all of the magazines just to clear out some space in our garage.

But I feel like there were so many better things I could have done with my magazines.

Here are some of my ideas for the next stockpile:

• Donate them to a local hospital, med serve or doctor’s office. These places can always use some new (er) reading materials. You can usually just drop them off in the lobby of your local hospital. You might want to call first to make sure they will accept used magazines.
• If the magazines are in pristine condition, many libraries will accept them for resale. Our library will accept any magazines except for Smithsonian and National Geographic. (I’m assuming certain adult magazines would also fall into the not-accept category.)
• Many pre-schools and after-school programs would probably welcome the magazines, and could use them for numerous different craft projects.
• Know of an artist who makes collages or works in multi-media? That person might also want your old  magazines.
• You could also save the magazines to do craft projects at home if your kids are crafty (mine is not.) Or if you are crafty. Magazine pictures are great for decoupage.
• If you live near a fashion school, and have several fashion magazines, students at the school might be interested in your magazines.
• If you have a shredder, you could shred them and use them as pretty filler in boxes, in place of Styrofoam nerdles.
• Or wrap small packages with them.
• Maybe even collage some pieces on a plain box to dress it up?

What about you? Any other good ideas to recycle used magazines?