De-Clutter Your Home: Week Three (Recipes)

Decide how you want to access your recipes.
Do you want to have all of your recipes in one big binder? Would you prefer to have all of your recipes hosted online (AllRecipes.com is a good website for that)? Perhaps you want to have a binder AND keep your favourite cookbooks as well.

Decide which route you want to go and stick with it.

View your online recipes.
If you have a bunch of recipes online that you want to try (or that you have already tried), go through them all right now and delete the ones you will never make.

Be realistic about what you are going to keep. Personally, I’ve kept this one onion rings recipe on my computer for over 2 years and Richard and I don’t really even like onions. So why am I saving it? Time to delete that one. If I do ever decide to make onion rings one day, I’m sure I can find that recipe again.

Once you have removed all of the recipes that you know you will not make, either print them all for your binder, or add them to your ‘recipe box’ on AllRecipes.com.

If you want to keep your recipes online, you can also bookmark your favourites – but orgaize them! Separate breads from salads, poultry from beef, etc. by using folders.

For example:
Recipes>Poultry>Spicy Chicken Wings
Recipes>Desserts>Crepe Cake With Strawberries & Blueberries
Recipes>Pasta>2 Cheese Penne Pasta

Review your cookbooks.
Look through all of your cookbooks and make note of the recipes you enjoy. Write down the recipe name, cookbook name and the page number that the recipe can be found on.

If you plan to have a recipe binder, I suggest having a page right before each category (an index page), and on that page you would list your favourite cookbook recipes. I saw this on Jen’s website and thought it was a marvelous idea. Doing this ensures that instead of flipping through a bunch of cookbooks, trying to find that one fantastic recipe, you just look for it in your recipe binder (where everything is organized).

Now, if you don’t want to have a recipe binder, you can still make note of your favourite recipes found in cookbooks and keep that sheet of paper wherever you store your cookbooks.

Get rid of cookbooks that no longer have recipes that interest you, and store the ones you do love in a place that is easily accessible (preferably in the kitchen).

Keep your cookbooks off of your kitchen counters, as they can be splashed with food or liquids and be damaged.

Since our kitchen is tiny, we keep our cookbooks in the hutch in our dining room. It’s right beside the kitchen, so I don’t have to trek too far to get a recipe.

Organize your recipe binder.
If you cook quite a bit, I would definetely suggest putting together a recipe binder. It’s very handy to have all of your recipes in one spot that you can bring with you from room to room (the office when you print off new recipes, the living room when you make your weekly meal plan, the kitchen when you cook…).

Divide your cookbook into many sections, so that you can find certain recipes easily. You can find page dividers at any home office or discount department store. Here are a few category suggestions:

- Breads
- Soups & Salads
- Pasta
- Poultry
- Beef
- Seafood
- Desserts
- Breakfast
- Side Dishes

It’s a good idea to keep all of your recipes in page protectors, so that the pages don’t get stuff splashed on them when you are cooking in the kitchen. Wipe off these page protectors every once in awhile with a damp cloth.

Keep your recipe book (as well as cookbooks) as close to the kitchen as possible, so that your recipes are easy to find when you it’s time to do some cooking!