Running out of room

I don't know why I started doing it years ago, but at whatever publication I work for, I keep a copy of every issue I've worked on in a stack underneath my desk (or beside it). It's mainly because I'm too lazy to get up and walk to the other room where they are all stacked in piles per issue — when I want to see how something was designed or when an article appeared, I want to flip through the issue ASAP. Also I have a tendency to walk into another room for the express purpose of something or other but by the time I get there my thoughts have moved on and I can't remember why I needed to go into the room in the first place.

The only problem is that after a while, even at a newspaper that only publishes twice a month, the papers begin to pile up. You can see here what might seem a modest pile of Lögberg-Heimskringlas — but it actually represents every issue (except one) that I worked on as designer or editor since coming back to L-H in February 2004.

I know many subscribers have piles of back issues much more impressive than these — I've seen them! I wonder why they are keeping them, if not as a reference for what we should or shouldn't put into the next issue. Anybody out there have a theory?

P.S. (added at 4:09) in case anyone is wondering why the papers on top seem whiter than those on the bottom, it's not just because the ones on the bottom are older and have started to yellow (this pile has almost never seen sunlight). We switched from printing with The Daily Graphic to The Prolific Group in January 2006, and printed the newspaper on better paper. That's why there's a clean break in the colour of the papers.