We all have good intentions when it comes to tasks we have put off for years. Take the task of organizing your recipe collection.  Yep, that used to be on the top of my list around New Year’s of things to do to improve my life and my sanity.

One year I actually heeded my good intentions and did something about one of them. I organized my family recipes and my entire recipe collection. Here’s what I did:

With Good Intentions, I Scheduled Myself
On my weekly schedule I set aside no more than one hour to review and sort, keep or toss recipes in my recipe collection.  I scheduled myself to do this while watching a favorite television show on a specific night.

With Good Intentions, I Sorted Recipes
While watching the TV show, I glanced at a recipe (very easy for us habitual multi-taskers) to determine if it was something I truly wanted to make, or had made and liked. If it passed either test, I added it to a pile of recipes of similar type (e.g. desserts, salads, entrées).

At the end of the hour, I created a file folder for each type of recipe. If the recipe type was a new category, it got a new file folder. Otherwise, I added recipes to file folders I had made on a previous evening of sorting. These were placed alphabetically in a cardboard box.

With Good Intentions, I Sorted Recipes, Twice
When I had reviewed all of my recipe collection and tossed the losers, I had a nice box full of categorized file folders. Certainly a much better place than I was previously. I could have chosen to stop there, and continue my old ways of clipping and hoarding, but instead I went one step further: I sorted the recipes again. After the second sort, I had a manageable recipe collection that I was truly interested in keeping.

With Good Intentions, I Created a Recipe Collection Cookbook
My next step was to get the paper copies of these recipes into electronic form. About that time I was in the process of developing my Matilda’s Fantastic Cookbook Software. So using my recipe collection was a great way to test the cookbook software’s easy-to-use recipe template, and turn my good intentions of organizing my recipe collection into a reality. Whenever I want a recipe, all I do is search by recipe name in the search bar on the bottom of the recipe template and print any recipe as needed.

Now I still use the same file folders I created for my original recipe collection sorting to store new clippings and ideas. Every year about this time I go through the files and cull them out for entering in my cookbook software’s recipe template. It keeps me organized and a bit more sensible about my recipe collection.

P.S. Have you seen our terrific new products to coordinate with Matilda’s Fantastic Cookbook Software?  We’ve got really nice, high quality binders to store your recipes, section dividers complete with pre-printed tab labels, and page protectors to keep the splatters off.  Take a look at our Cookbook People Store.

Happy New Year Cookbooking,

Matilda

Making a recipe book? Check out all the recipe software and cookbook binding supplies we have at CookbookPeople.com.

If you enjoyed this article, you might check out:
• 5 Easy Action Steps to Create Cookbooks (and De-clutter Too!)
• Homemade Class Cookbook: A New Twist on Apple for the Teacher
• 7 Steps to Backing up your Life

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