In an uncharacteristic moment of productivity, I decided to organize our recipes. This was a serious decision, considering that Mr. Z's recipes were a jumbled mess that was barely contained by the file folder in which he kept them. Mine, on the other hand, were stuffed randomly into a plastic box which had started out with category dividers, but ended up with 98% percent of the recipes stuffed in front of the dividers due to my refusal to decide where they belonged.
But now?
Why binders? Because they open flat.
And the sheet protectors mean you can pull the recipe out
and if you spill on it, just wipe it off
That's right. Beautiful organization, and it actually wasn't even that difficult. One afternoon I booted the dogs out into the yard and took over the floor of pretty much the entire ground floor of the apartment. Having made an index card for every possible food category, I sat down and divided ALL of our recipes into piles. That exhausted my productive capabilities for the day and each pile was shoved into a folder and tossed on the book shelf.
Then a few days ago, I sucked it up and went to Staples in search of binders and page protectors. One tip... those photo pages for 3x5 photos are perfect for recipe cards. You know, in case you feel productive.
I just did one category at a time so as to avoid getting overwhelmed, and I finally finished up yesterday. Full sheets were put in sheet protectors, while smaller recipes went into 4x6 and 3x5 photo pages. Irregularly shaped, cut out recipes got rubber cemented onto typing paper and went into sheet protectors as well.
Good photography can convince me that someday I might
make a cake shaped like a beehive, complete with
marzipan bees. It could happen...
One perk was discovering all kinds of tasty recipes I want to try. And finding some old ones I'd forgotten about. There's also a whole bunch of Martha Stewart recipes with beautiful pictures that I will most probably never make. But like I've said before, I'm a sucker for good photography...
5 comments:
Um, can you come to my house and organize? Please?
I had no idea about the cousin behind the Z. So glad we connected though! Hope to see you next month at the pansy table?
i am proud of your drive and organizational skills :) the closest i have come to any type of organization as far as recipes are concerned was after thanksgiving. every year i have to dig for all the turkey recipes...and you know me, i always overdo it. so after last year, i thought to myself "it would be nice to have all these in a book." so i typed them up all cute and bought thanksgiving like scrapbook paper and "accessories" and made pretty little pages and then took it to staples to be bound together. i even went as far to make a shopping list which is laminated (if you were not laughing at me at this point, i am sure you are now.) and stored in a small pocket on the inside back cover. seriously. i am now thinking about doing one for my christmas cookie weekend, as i run into the same problem.
I am very impressed - my sad little folder of recipes is now begging for attention. Not a good camping project though.
Wow, very impressive. You've got a great start at having an organized home.
*refrains from saying something cheeky like "I used to be organized too, but then I got married" or "I used to have recipes but then I realized I didn't like to cook," and instead of saying these things, Ros simply smiles and compliments her friend Z.* :)
I only wish that my recipes were HALF as organized as yours!
Post a Comment