Organize Those Recipes: Part One

Wait! Don't run away! I promise, it's totally do-able. But first, I need to warn you and let you know that it's an on-going process. Seriously, if I sat down and decided to organize all the recipes in my posession...well, let's just say that I would probably be in the same chair for two weeks straight, and I'd have just begun to make a dent. So we're going to do this one step at a time, and this is the first post dedicated to recipe organization. I'm sure there will be many, and as always, I would LOVE tips, hints, suggestions, questions, or anything you do to try and maintain some semblance of organization.

So let's start today with my worst offender: Magazines. Let me start by saying I.Love.Food.Magazines. Love them. I love flipping through them, reading the articles, reading the recipes, imagining myself making them, and imagining my family enjoying said recipes. But I have a serious problem hoarding those magazines. So what's a girl to do? It's easy to say I'll purge and just throw them out, but to actually do it...you never know when an older recipe is going to all the sudden speak to you. (Please tell me I'm not alone with that feeling...!)

Currently, I subscribe to and receive these magazines:

Cooking Light
Eating Well
Home Cooking
Gourmet
Vegetarian Times
Better Homes and Gardens

I also sometimes pick up Bon Appetit, Everyday Food, Rachael Ray, and Taste of Home. That's a lot of magazines floating around my home! So here's what I do. First, I got myself a basket, it looks like this:

In that basket I keep up to 3 issues of each magazine- just the most current ones. This gives me a place to automatically put magazines as they come in the mail, and anytime I have a few minutes to flip through one, I know where they all are, and can find them here. As I flip through each magazine I circle, star, or otherwise notate the recipes that interest me, as well as write them down in my To-Try notebook. (You do have one of those- don't you?) All that goes in my notebook is the name of the recipe, and what magazine it is in. Here's an example of that list:

This way, when I'm making my menu for the week, I can glance at this page if I want a new recipe. By writing down the issue and page number, I've totally streamlined the process, and I can find that recipe in a matter of seconds when I want to give it a closer look. This list is an excellent resource when I'm making a recipe that uses something like leeks or fennel, and I want to find another recipe to use up that bulb of fennel.

After the basket, magazines get bumped to the shelf. I have one shelf with a small space devoted to putting my magazines. Here's a picture of that:

By having a small space, I have to be picky and choosy about what I keep. My Cooking Light magazines I always keep for one full year, and then I pass them on after I've received the annual. This way, I can go through the annual and mark recipes I've made and enjoyed, as well as recipes I wanted to try, but never got around to. You can see too many CL's on this shelf, and I really need to sort through them and pass them on now. I keep my Eating Well magazines as well because they are a wealth of information and recipes. Although now that I've been receiving it for over two years, I should probably think about culling them.

All the rest of the magazines get shelf space until I find the time to purge. Gourmet is an excellent example of that. Usually when I have about 6 months worth of issues, I sit down and flip through them. I tear out the recipes that I am interested in and toss the magazines themselves. Then I take those torn out recipes to the computer and find them online. Then I either print them off, or save them to my computer, and throw out the torn recipes as well. I do the same for the Vegetarian Times magazines. In the case of a recipe that I can't find online, I look carefully at the recipe and decide if I think it's worth the time to type it into the computer. I've tossed many a recipe because it was very long and daunting and I didn't want to take the time to type it in. It's also interesting how sometimes a recipe will speak to me, and after a few months have passed I'm no longer interested- or something else will strike my fancy that wouldn't have before.

But what if you don't have the space to store all these magazines like I do! When we lived in a much smaller apartment, I had to be very careful about what I kept. I would keep the CL magazines, but everything else would be kept until a new issue showed up. Then before I flipped through the new one, I would flip through the old one and tear out any recipes that interested me. I kept a file folder near the computer, so these recipes would go into folder until I had time to either look them up online or type them in myself. I know plenty of people who organize their recipes this way so as not to have extra clutter hanging around. It works great. The only problem I can see with tearing out recipes is for if you like to pass your magazines on. If you're sharing with someone, then you should probably take the time to look them up online or type them in and not tear them out.

One final note about magazines. If you begin to notice that you tear less and less recipes out of a given magazine, you should probably think about not getting that one anymore- it just adds to the clutter if you're not using it and enjoying it. I stopped getting Bon Appetit after I realized I didn't try any recipes out of it except for the Thanksgiving issue. So now I buy only the Thanksgiving issue every year- and everything else I can look at while at the library. Home Cooking is my current dud. I don't know what posessed me to subscribe...but it's really not my cup of tea, and the recipes in it are nothing new in the least. At least not to me. I won't be renewing that one.

Questions? Comments? What do you do with your magazines?