too , the same kind of things , boxes of Q , Mojo , Uncut etc etc . I managed to sell a pile of rare stuff for over £500 the rest went to the tip . Now , when a new issue comes out the old one goes to recycling , no build up of crap that you'll never look at again .

Funny you should mention that. I recently had a burning desire to refer to a twenty year old copy of Q but I didn't have it, however by good fortune someone has one for sale on eBay. We were discussing this on the radio last night and one caller mentioned the Poll Winners issue of Smash Hits which he regularly takes out, re-reads and then stores away again, safe in the knowledge that 'Dare' was the album of the year. I believe this may also not be unconnected to the presence of Claire Grogan on the cover.

I had two complete Billy Bookcases full of CDs, plus two Bennos. Somewhere in the region of 1,500 or so. I took the decision that if I was going to continue to purchase hard media, I needed to do something about it, so I bought packet upon packet of plastic CD wallets, broke the cases apart and put the front cover and the CD inside a wallet. I've retained the back covers from the CDs, but I'm not sure I'll keep them. It was interesting how other people regarded dumping a load of plastic as sacriligious, and indeed I procrastinated for ages before actually doing it. It's just plastic; the important thing is the music and to a lesser extent the artwork.

Pros:
* My entire CD collection now fits on four shelves of a Billy. Now I have more space I can fill up.
* It's no longer obvious at a glance how much of my music taste is really uncool.

Cons:
* It's harder to find anything without the spine labels on display, but there's sufficient digipacks and special editions that one can locate the general area of the alphabet pretty quickly.
* Other people seem to be appalled at this desecration.

a few months back and came to the conclusion they were worthless. But I can't bring myself to get rid of the 200 or so that are in the loft and probably causing structural damage to my bedroom ceiling.

I do dip in if ever I'm up there, and have to be called down hours later, covered in dust and itching like crazy from where I've stretched out on the loft insulation and lost myself in the green one (No 14, iirc).

I can only bring myself to throw the odd handful of old Qs away every few years. I only recently junked the first edition of something called Vox, a lamentable rip-off that sunk without trace years back. If only I'd known I'd never look at it again before lugging it around 15+ house moves over the last 20 years.

Throwing out a handful of old mags at a time does force me to go through them with care, in case there's anything that I still 'need' to keep. I enjoyed re-reading the Sting interview where he was boasting about his tantric exploits - absolutely no trace of the irony or humour he later said he used.

I bought every single one from issue 1 (April or May 1986 as I recall, Paul McCartney was probably on the cover) through to sometime around 2004 when I came up with '50 reasons never to buy Q again'. I threw out every one of them as soon as I finished reading them. I do still have the Decade cd though - the very best of 1986 - 1996 apparently.

20 gb of music from my itunes, lots of stuff that I either listened to once, or will never listen to. I'm going to have to be a bit more disciplined with what I put on in it future!

the flat got a major refurb and i had to face up to the fact that i had more stuff than the space allowed ... old copies of Q and Private Eye went for recycling, other magazines too, and the general accumulation of 'stuff' that builds up between the time you leave home and hitting your 40s ... i had to face up to the fact i was single, not immortal and if i didn't get rid of this now, which poor bugger was going to have to sort it out if i got knocked over by the number 22?

so out went old diaries and letters, as well as the magazines ...

i came to the conclusion that i'd held on to them because somehow they were *supposed* to feel meaningful, part of my identity, my personal history and thereby worth keeping ... the hard part was accepting that they weren't sufficiently meaningful at all ...

I've managed to dump the copies of Empire, Mojo and various other bits and bobs, but still have the old Q's (from issue 1 to about 200ish). I know I'll never read them, its just the thought that I bought the first issue back when I was a poor student in 1986.

With just about everything being available on the internet these days, it surprises me that old issues of magazines are not easily available online. I can't say I've really tried that hard to look, but a simple google didn't pull up much. You would think someone, somewhere would would have them scanned, catalogued and posted online for if we ever did want to go back to them.....

Gone to a new loving home with a work colleague who was going into raptures over one on t'interweb.

The Q's went years ago. Limited myself to keeping one file box only, and have forced myself to throw away each Word mag as it's read (alright, apart from the HJH one, and one where a blog post I made was quoted - my finest moment).

Surely you want Hoarders Anonymous? We in The Massive are proud hoarders of all manner of tat, er, memorabilia. Collectors to a man and boy (and girl), soon to be spotted on the Antiques Roadshow clutching a rare first edition of The Word. If that does not manage to impress Fiona Bruce you can call me Fraser Lewry and boil me a otter for tea.

Incidentally my latest addiction is to those shiny round plastic things, Ceedees I think they are called, given away as a "freebie" in those newspaper johnnies. Boxes of the darned gubbins, sure they are breeding, picked up by the kilo from local charity shops for tuppence each or less. Funny thing is I can sell them for oodles of cash on eBay - all proceeds going direct to my nominated charity - to those damn yankess, who seem to have a liking for Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, Prince, Macca, Oasis, McFly et al. God bless 'em I say.

Forget magazines. Beggers to post and cost a fortune in stamps.

it was 230 paces from my flat to the car park but a mere 23 to the rubbish chute. Got rid of tons of stuff - magazines, notebooks, sketchbooks to save my poor aching back. Haven't missed one so far.

has been very good for me--old magazines, books that haven't been read for years and/or won't be, furniture, audio tapes, etc etc have all been purged over several years.

Now we are onto old bank statements, VHS, etc etc--one aspiration is to rationalise the hi-fi enough to get a turntable back in there though-and we all know where that could lead ...

http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/a_tale_of_two_racks/

Actually found BBC Life Laundry series quite sympa and helpful, more than you can say for most reality TV imo.

I'm clearly an amateur though, looking at
http://www.organizedlivingworld.com/
I see I haven't even split my charisma into 3 parts yet ;-);-)

Had a massive clear out (40/50 bags worth) two years ago.
The final straw was when rats had got to some old Record Collectors in our outside (true!) loo.
Tidied them up, threw in old Mojos, Uncuts and Word and a huge amount of books and football programmes, and distributed them around the charity shops of East London.
Never looked back. Great thing to do.
The shops were delighted and I really haven't missed anything even though I did use to refer to them all the time.
My plan now is to get the CDs and LPs down to a 'working model' of about 100 each for the proposed move away from London.

Frankly, I think I could live out my days with about 20 CDs, most on Ace, all rock 'n' roll.