I love to bake. As a matter of fact, in the past week I’ve made peanut butter blondies, cranberry banana walnut bread and an apple crisp (served hot with vanilla ice cream…mmmm). Thank heavens I have family and friends to share my baking bounty with, otherwise my hips would be screaming. I digress…
As I was baking my cranberry banana walnut bread this morning I realized that about 75% of the baking recipes I use are pulled from only two or three of my cooking and baking books. Actually, one of those sources is my favorite baking blog: Joy the Baker. I recently purged my collection from about 20 different cookbooks down to 10. But even of those 10 books, I would say I only use about 10-15% of the recipes in them. You know how it goes, once you find one that you like, you master it and make it over and over again. Sure, I get adventurous every once in awhile but in a pinch or for the sake of surety…I’ll opt for a tried and tested recipe. Is that the case for you, too? Well then, why do we keep holding on to all those books and magazines that we’ve only used once or had the intentions of using but never did? Maybe because some of those cookbooks are sentimental hand-me-downs or gifts. Perhaps they’re simply for display and represent abundance. Or maybe most of them represent good intentions but other priorities got in the way. Whatever the case, if you’re looking at cutting back on your over abundance of things or are in need of some additional space in the kitchen that’s being occupied by unused cookbooks, here are a few tips and suggestions to help you control the cookbook clutter:
1. Assess, Sort and Purge your collection of cookbooks. Assess the space to determine how much space you are willing to dedicate to your books. Also assess what your needs are. Do you really need five or ten BBQ books? Decide on one or two and move on. You can do this by sorting your cookbooks into categories and then picking out your top two favorite books in each. Now purge the rest. Donate or sell any books you’ve never used or haven’t used in over a year. Check out how Erin Doland from the Unclutterer purged her cookbooks.
2. For magazine recipes, don’t save the whole magazine, just the recipe. It’s tempting to save all those magazines full of beautiful, scrumptious pictures but try not hoard them all. Pick one or two of the recipes you think you’ll actually use, clip the recipes and then recycle the magazine. A great way to make sure you stay in control of your magazine clutter is to clip out your recipes as soon as you get your subscription. Don’t wait till you have a year’s worth of magazines to sort and clip recipes. That’s way, way, way too much work.
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3. Consolidate your stray recipes in a recipe box or binder. Personally, I prefer using a binder with page protectors for my recipes. If you’re a messy cook or baker like me, you’ll want to protect those papers from gooey, sticky fingers. Plus, since it’s in a binder it stacks up nicely with my other cookbooks rather than a box that might take up awkward space. There are some beautiful recipe binders out there…mine isn’t one of them! It simple, plain, and oh so boring…but it gets the job done.
My recipe binder with labels and page protectors
4. Scan and save your recipes on your computer…or better yet on the “cloud” (internet). If you’ve got a laptop and wireless internet you could pull up your recipes and bring your laptop into the kitchen without having to print them out or open up a cookbook (be cautious of those sticky fingers though). You could also save your recipes in Google Docs or Evernote so that you can have access to them anywhere you have internet connection. I actually have saved quite a few of my favorite recipes on both Google Docs and Evernote and was able to pull them up on my iPhone and laptop when I was out of town. Too cool!
5. Get a digital recipe reader. This could be your one and only cookbook in your kitchen…can you imagine that! Talk about a space saver. There are a couple of different models out there, but basically these digital recipe readers can store thousands of your recipes, help you categorize them, set up a favorites list, set up multiple timers for multiple recipes, are splash resistant and can upload additional recipes with pictures. I’m seriously considering this…or getting an iPad!!!
6. Still talking digital…get a recipe app for your internet enabled mobile phone. There are tons of apps out there that not only provide you instant access to recipes, but they also can create a shopping list of ingredients for you. Wow! Can you tell yet that I’m a fan of digital technology?
7. Store your cookbooks and recipes together in one location, preferably near where you cook or bake.
Located above the stove...notice the 'Recipes' binder is on the end because I use it the most!
8. Don’t forget the “one in one out” rule. If you buy a new cookbook, try to get rid of an old one. This rule goes for controlling any type of clutter in your home.
Hope this helps! Do you have a cookbook tip you’d like to share? Leave a comment below…we’d love to hear it!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
But how do I scan and save to my computer my hundreds of recipes, all on scraps of paper, or in mag. articles!? I have wireless and a scanner, copier. Just don’t know how to use it
Pat,
My first recommendation would be to edit your stack of recipes and let go of any that you don’t like or probably wouldn’t make. If there are none to let go of…then I would recommend scanning them yourself. But since you are unsure of how to use your scanner, then perhaps sending your recipes to a company to do it for you would be the better option. Just type in “document scanning services” and check out the many different companies that can scan your documents and return them to you on CD or DVD (Officedrop.com, liveonrewind.com, scanningamerica.com). It all comes down to your comfort level and time. Hope this helps and thanks for writing!
I guess I’m not exactly sure what you mean. Do you not want to take them out because you don’t want them to get dirty? If so, you can protect your cookbooks with a cookbook holder.If you want to organize specific recipes in the book, maybe you could use a flag or tab to identify your favorite ones. Otherwise, if you want copies of your favorite recipes you’ll have to do it the old fashion way and put your book on a copier and print out each of your recipes, then put them in a binder for easy access. Or if you want to get “techie”…take a picture on your smartphone or use Evernote to capture an image of your recipe and it’ll save it on the cloud for you.
I love to collect & read cookbooks and mag recipe clippings rather than bags & shoes. I can cook but my hubby does all the cooking everyday. I have reduced my books a bit & I know I need to purge more. For me, I find going techie a dilemma because of the fear of my internet acct getting purged by accident, inaccessible or the program being absolete. I have searched the net on tried & true recipes in my collection which I did– just to find typos on them which I feel is not dependable in the future. What do you think? Am I crazy?
I don’t think you’re crazy! It is a bit of a change and challenge to go from hardcopy recipes to digital. I would say a majority (95%) of my recipes are stored online in my Google Docs account or in my Evernote account….and that any new recipes I usually search the internet to find a good one. I’ve never lost a recipe in either account in the 7 years or so I’ve been going digital so I’m pretty comfortable with “online” storage.
That being said, I do have 1 binder with the recipes I use frequently…some are my favorites or simply “go-to” recipes for entertaining. I find that 1 binder convenient instead of thumbing through my iPad or printing out the recipe from my computer to use. But I only limit myself to one binder of recipes for sake of saving space and not collecting too many recipes that I probably won’t use.
But for you, I recommend doing whatever you are comfortable with…all digital…all paper…or a little bit of both. Maybe save ones that you “might” use someday digitally, and only keep hard copies of the ones that you know you will use. I think the big question is…of those recipes you collect, how many have you actually used? If you haven’t used any in a year then I’d probably let go of them…especially if they are becoming too cumbersome to manage. Speaking of management…I highly recommend going through your recipes a couple of times a year to edit. That way you won’t be overwhelmed or spend too much time deciding what to cook.
Hope that helps!
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