IN EACH ROOM â—½ HOME
I don’t know about you, but I print and save lots of recipes that are either from magazines or the internet or all sorts of places (I even have a tear-off calendar full of recipes!) and they’ve piled up over the years! This month, I’m sharing my newest and most fun way I’ve recently reorganized them all and have them stacked on a cute cart in my kitchen!
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I used to file all of my paper recipes in a big file box, which worked for a long time, until I grew tired of the box and it was way too full. I decided to go through an entire process of getting these recipes placed, organized and useful once again…this time in little books of their own.
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I went to Barnes and Noble and thought about a big binder, but decided against that. Then I saw the moleskin journals – and loved the idea of a little book of recipes for each category – cut out and pasted on the pages. It’s sort of like scrapbooking, with recipes, instead of photos! I purchased eight of them.
Next, I sat down on multiple nights while watching TV shows in the winter and I went through every single paper or magazine or card recipe in my files and threw away any that I never made any more or didn’t need, or any duplicates. That was a lot!
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I then made piles of recipes by categories, now adding in hummus and granola and pesto recipes as a category, because I make homemade of these! I even had a pile of good smelling potpourri recipes, too!
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The fun part was next. I began cutting and pasting (I actually decided to use tape instead) the recipes on the pages of the moleskin journals. Some journals had more than one category, and some only have one…depending on the number of recipes. This was a blast. And some recipes were too large to be cut or pasted, so they’re just folded and tucked inside the pages of the journals.
It took a while, but I now had the books organized. And then I bought cute bookends and found a place for my new books on top of a cute cart in my kitchen.
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I got a recipe book stand holder for Christmas and I can now place the book I choose, open it and read the recipe I need, and then place the book back on the cart.
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Who knows, in another decade I might do something different. But I’m really, really enjoying my little moleskin library of all things to make and eat in my little kitchen!
