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• Home Organization • Paper/Filing Systems • Time Management | ||||||||||
ARTICLE There’s a sale on chicken cutlets. Your neighbor left five pounds of zucchini on your doorstep. What to do with all of this food? Find a great recipe! Recipes come from many different sources--magazines, the internet, a close friend, or relative. We bring them into our kitchens with the best of intentions. We collect them and say to ourselves, “I KNOW I’ll make this recipe someday.” But, unless a particular place has been set up to hold recipes, they oftentimes end up in a pile of papers or stuffed in a drawer. Let’s face it—we lead busy lives. Who wants to spend an hour searching for a recipe that will take a half hour to make and fifteen minutes to eat? The easiest way to keep track of your recipe collection is to create a home for them. Follow these steps for an organized and splatter-proof recipe collection that will make meal planning a less time-consuming task: 1. Gather all of your recipes in one place. Your kitchen or dining room table is a perfect place for this task. 2. Sort through your recipes. Divide them into categories that would be useful to you and your family. If you’re a vegetarian, there’s no need to create a Meat category. If you enjoy ethnic cuisine, then designate categories such as Italian or Chinese. Examples: Pasta, Dessert, Holidays, Soups, Low-Carb, etc. 3. Purge the recipes you think you’ll never in a million years attempt to cook. Be honest with yourself. Your friend may be a Martha Stewart wannabe but are you? Reasons for purging a recipe: • Too many ingredients • Too many expensive ingredients you may never use again • Takes more time to cook and prepare than you’re willing to give • Not a healthy option for you and your family members 4. After you’ve taken the time to purge your recipes, it’s time to create a good home for them. If you only have a few recipes and don’t think you’ll be collecting many more, keeping them taped to index cards in a recipe box will suffice. But if you plan on maintaining a large recipe collection, a binder is a great way to keep them organized. Supplies you’ll need: • a binder (1”, 2” or 3” ring depending upon the number of recipes you have) • plastic sheet protectors • your recipe collection divided into categories • extra-wide dividers Write out an index tab for each of your recipe categories and insert them into the tab of each divider. Place these dividers in your binder in order of importance to you. For example, if you like to bake, then the ‘Dessert’ divider may go in front while ‘Soup’ or ‘Ethnic’ may go towards the back. Go to your first recipe pile. Separate the recipes into two piles--those on 8.5” x 11” paper and those that may have been cut out of a magazine. Take the recipes printed on 8.5” x 11” paper, place two back-to-back with each other and slide them into a plastic sheet protector. Place them in the binder. Tape the recipes cut from a magazine/newspaper , tape them to both sides of a piece of 8.5” x 11” paper, and slide them into a plastic sheet protector. Repeat for each category until each recipe has a home in the binder. 5. It’s six months later and your binder is organized, but may have become over-stuffed with recipes. Take a few minutes to go through your recipe collection and ask yourself the following questions: • Have I made this recipe in the last six months (not counting holiday-specific recipes) • Am I realistically ever going to make this recipe? • When I made this recipe, did my family enjoy the meal? If you answered no to any of those questions then it is time to purge your binder of those recipes to make room for new ones. Doing this every 3-6 months will keep your binder filled with only the recipes you enjoy creating and eating. Great websites for recipes: www.foodtv.com www.recipesource.com www.epicurious.com *Browse the Article Archive for Organized Artistry's time, money, and sanity-saving tips and ideas... | ||||||||||
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Editors/Publishers:You are granted permission to publish the above article in its entirety provided that the following 'footer' is included after each article: Article by Stacey Agin Murray, professional organizer and owner of Organized Artistry, LLC. Visit http://www.organizedartistry.com for your FREE e-list of 'Top Ten Tips for Organized Living.' A courtesy copy e-mailed or snail mailed to the address below is appreciated. | ||||||||||
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Organized Artistry LLC • PO Box 2682 Fair Lawn, NJ 07410 • 201.703.8438 stacey@organizedartistry.com | ||||||||||
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