Creative Ways to Reuse and Recycle Old Magazines

With magazine subscriptions as little as $10 a year, it's easy to accumulate dozens of old magazines. Over time the magazine basket begins to overflow and you find yourself stacking magazines in bookcases, storage ottomans and cramming them into drawers. If you want to reduce your clutter but don't want to throw them away, consider these creative ways to reuse your old magazines.

Creative Ways to Reuse and Recycle Old Magazines: Donate Them

If you attend a gym and have ever perused the magazine basket you know how reading a Better Homes and Garden magazine seems to make a cardio workout fly by. There's nothing more frustrating than checking the basket to find that you've already read each magazine, especially if you forgot your book or MP3 player. Help your fellow gym goers out by donating your old magazines. If you don't attend a gym, consider donating them to your doctor's office, thrift stores, youth centers, schools or libraries. Or put them on Craiglist (just be sure to meet at a mall or public place when giving them away). Or ask friends and family if they want to reuse them.

Creative Ways to Reuse and Recycle Old Magazines: Create a Recipe Book

Have you ever noticed how recipes that include pictures seem so much more appealing than those that don't? Your old magazines may be filled with delicious recipes, along with those gorgeous and helpful pictures. Spend a few hours going through your old magazines cutting out promising recipes. Then slip each recipe into a large photo album to create a recipe book that includes pictures. Another advantage to having pictures with each recipe is that you can present the picture to your husband and kids in advance to get approval and avoid making something they won't like.

Creative Ways to Reuse and Recycle Old Magazines: Scrapbooking

Another way to reuse old magazines is for scrapbooking or making crafts. Home and garden magazines are filled with pictures of beautiful home décor, gorgeous floral arrangements and bright, colorful fruits and veggies. Glue your favorite finds onto photo frames.

Creative Ways to Reuse and Recycle Old Magazines: Placemats

Reuse your old magazines by tearing out and laminating a favorite page.

Creative Ways to Reuse and Recycle Old Magazines: Lessons for Kids

Reuse your old magazines by rounding up your toddlers and having them locate and cut out certain fruits, vegetables, flowers, numbers and shapes. Then create food or flower collages.

Creative Ways to Reuse and Recycle Old Magazines: Room Borders

Reuse old magazines as borders for your kid's room. Create borders of pictures of babies taken from old parenting magazines, or video games stills from old gamer magazines. Or take pictures of airplanes and tanks from Popular Mechanics.