Breaking my habit of collecting too much stuff

I have a problem with keeping things around the house. I do this for a couple reasons...one is that I'm afraid that if I get rid of it, I'll need it. I'm surprised that after holding onto something for YEARS, I'll get rid of it and find out that I needed it within a few days of saying goodbye. It happens at home and at work. At work I'll hold onto a stack of papers from three years ago, decide it's safe to shred them because the students are entering their senior year of college...then one of them will call me asking about letters of recommendation or something like that. As much as I'd like to, there's obviously no way I can remember some of those smaller details about all of my students.

In order to tackle the problem at home, though, I've decided that I'm going to start with my magazines. I keep magazines around because they contain good articles or exercises or whatever. I know it will be time-consuming, but I think I'm going to work on summarizing articles, then after I've written my summary, the magazine can go to the recycling bin or to someone else who might want to read it. Obviously this is more for my reference than for your reading enjoyment, but if it does end up helping one person, it's worth it!