De-cluttering the Kitchen

As I said on Monday, one of my March goals is to de-clutter. I actually started over the weekend with a project I’ve been putting off for a while: organizing my recipes!

As you might expect, I collect a lot of recipes, and I’m often tearing them out of magazines. If I do print them off the computer so I can easily take them into the kitchen, I have those floating around too. Initially, I went low-tech and low-budget and put them in a binder in plastic sleeves. While I love that the plastic sleeves are spill-proof, I hate that the binder is bulky and ugly.

So when I saw a bunch of chic recipe organizers at Borders a few weeks ago, I knew it was what I needed. When I went back to buy it last week, I was also happy to see that all their calendars were on sale for $1. I really needed a calendar for my office. Unfortunately the sale meant options were limited. After rejecting pigs in pearls and pugs, I ended up going with zebras…because I am half-black.

I also bought a Stuff White People Like tear-off calendar for $1. An LOL a day for $1 is my kinda deal. Today it is David Sedaris. “His stuff is kind of funny, but white people go crazy and will pay hundreds of dollars to hear him read from his own book. Let me say that again: they will pay money to see someone read from a book they have already read.”

Every day I’ve used it so far, things like this have really hit home.

Anyway, I also bought the recipe organizer!

It’s smaller than a binder, or even a regular cookbook, which is nice. It’s smooth and glossy and I just love the black and white pictures. (They had color options too, but who knows what colors my future kitchens could be?!)

It’s tabbed by cuisine…

In each section there are blank pages where you can write or paste recipes, as well as plastic and card stock pages with pockets for tucking in recipes.

I spent about a half hour cutting out recipes and pasting them into the book in each section. I put on music and had a dance party, so I effectively knocked out my “de-stress” goal at the same time!

I am really excited about this! Now I’ve started a tray on my desk of recipes to file, and I can just spend 20 minutes or so each week doing it! It’s so nice to be more organized, but also, I love having my recipes in a nice book. I love vintage cookbooks and recipe boxes (probably something else white people like), and I’m excited to start my own collection that will continue to fill up over the years!