52 Weeks to an Organized Home: Organize recipes and cookbooks (Week 5)

This week, the focus for 52 Weeks to an Organized Home is on organizing recipes and cookbooks.

The cookbooks that I use the most often are in the kitchen. There were a couple of cookbooks that were produced by companies (e.g., Jiffy, Pillsbury) that I looked through, took out recipes I wanted, and then recycled them. There was no reason to keep the entire booklet if I didn't plan on using the other recipes.

 

Cookbooks - before (left) and after (right).

On the lower shelf are cat treats, dog food, and grains (in the jars).

The other area I keep recipes is in my home office on a shelf. There are five recipe boxes - all filled with recipes that I've made.

In addition, there's a binder that I started a few years ago that include all the recipes that I want to make. Originally, I started dividing them by the type of grain (e.g., oats, barley, millet) to make it easier to follow the Waldorf method of having a specific grain each day. In Waldorf kindergarten classrooms they follow this schedule. It seems like a nice routine.

I also have tabs and sections that divide recipes by months. This, I'm finding, is a better way for me to organize recipes since there are ones that are more appropriate to try in the summer months when there's an abundance of produce; some that are holiday-related; and others that would be better during winter months (e.g., stew, chili, "heavier" type meals).

I pulled out all the recipes boxes, notebook, and loose recipes that I had in my closet.

As I looked through them, I put ones back that I had made and want to make again. These went in the recipe boxes. Four of the five boxes don't close, so either I need to go through these recipes I made and remove ones I don't think I'll want to make again; or buy another box.

The next thing I did was go through each recipe I wanted to try. The ones I still want to make, I filed them by the month I wanted to make them.

There were many recipes I no longer wanted to make. I had an entire bag full of recipes that I recycled.

Will I ever make all the recipes? Probably not. Yet, I like having a variety of recipes to choose from.

I was happy to find recipes that I want to make again - like my mom's lasagna on Valentine's Day. Someday soon I want to make a batch of my Grandma's rolls. They take an entire day to make. As I was filing the recipes, I thought I lost the recipe. I don't think anyone else has it. I would have been devastated.

As a baker, she made these rolls at her job as well as at home. She would come stay with us many times and while she was there she would make these rolls. She never measured anything. She just knew how much of each ingredient to use.

It took a lot of persuading for her to measure each of the items when she made rolls one time. I am so grateful she did this so a part of her legacy continues to live on each time I make the rolls.