Recipe Declutter Challenge

[imtnt]

Okay, so new year, need to clean out my recipes serious bad! Does anyone else have a large envelope full of clipped ones, printed off ones, etc.? Plus the books...Ahh! Anyway, I'm starting a recipe declutter challenge if you want to join in. Please help me -- do tell how you organize yours! I hope to have mine done by Valentine's day. It's going to be hard to throw away some of those that "looked neat" but I never made, nor will I probably ever get to them.

First, I'm going to purge, then figure out what to do with them. I REALLY, REALLY don't want to type them all in Word. I'm all for scanning and putting in a photo album though. Thoughts?

[Kythcat]

One thing I've gotten to do is start transfering recipes to my computer. Scanning is a great idea, and if your scanning program has the option to scan it into Word for you, even better. Then all you have to do is read over it and correct what letters didn't go through.


Once you have done the major purge, then as soon as you find a new recipe that you have tried, then either type in or scan it into your computer. It's what has worked for me here.

[Zippity]

Something my grandmother did years ago was make a family cookbook. It has tons of family favorites, gathered from all over the family. It's a lot of time, and a lot of trouble, but these are the proven recipes, so I go to those little cookbooks again and again. It is certainly a pain to type the recipes in, but if you can do a little at a time, you can easily create a book that can be printed and bound, at least eventually.

For now, I have a large binder with dividers in it. Recipes I grab out of magazines that I have tried and liked, I'll take the time to type them in. Then I print it and toss it in the binder. (They are also saved in a folder on my hard drive.) Recipes that I get online, I just print and toss in. Same with emailed recipes.

I don't keep many recipes around these days that I am "planning on trying one of these days." I usually try to get to them as soon as I can. I only have a handful of clippings or "to try" recipes.

What I do have a lot of is little recipe booklets. I use them, but they were getting everywhere. I got two magazine holders (fairly nice looking ones) and now those live on the kitchen bookshelf with the little booklets in them.

[imtnt]

Okay, so I didn't make it by V-day, but I'm still trying! I went through and tossed about 15%. Now, I'm sorting them for ones I've already made that I love and copying them onto recipe cards that go in my book. Then, I'm going to sort the questionable ones, try them once more and decide to keep or toss. Then, I'll try a couple per week that are new that I kept and again decide to keep or toss. So far, only 2 done today!