Thursday, October 23, 2014

Organizing -- Day 12

I have a large sewing room; it is the size of a two-car garage.  I know this because it is directly above my two-car garage.

Even with a large sewing room, the space is still limited.  One problem I have is storage.  This is a large room with no wall space; all of the would-be wall space is windows, a fireplace, and a sliding glass door.  It is very hard to put shelving in front of doors, windows, or a fireplace.  I sneak a skinny shelf in, here and there, but they are over-full and need to be re-organized.

I have interests other than quilting (gasp!) and they overflow into the sewing room.  Today's problem involves my cookbooks.  I love to cook (and eat) and I have a lot of cookbooks.  My kitchen has limited storage space (none) and the cookbooks are taking up precious shelf space in my sewing room.  It's time to fix that!

My dream was to contain all of my cookbooks on a single shelf:


Dream realized!

If I hadn't opened a cookbook in a decade or more, it was time to go.  If I looked at a cookbook and remembered the one recipe inside that I used, I copied down the recipe (with my personal changes) and let go of the book.  Fortunately, my library is having a used book sale this weekend.  If you live near me, you should definitely check it out; I hear they have a great collection of cookbooks for sale.

Most of the cooking we do now is based on recipes found on the internet.  How on earth do I store all of those printed pages?  I tried organizing them into a binder, but I was never able to keep it up.  I recently pulled out an old accordian file and labeled it to my liking:


This is working so far.  I can easily file each new printed recipe without needing a hole punch.  I can make as many categories as I like and change them easily by re-labeling the pocket.  In my system, "zucchini" is it's own category!  Anyone else have tons of zucchini recipes to get them through "drowning in zucchini" season?

I need to get to work on the rest of my shelves, but they are full of quilt books.  I'm not emotionally prepared to deal with those yet.

4 comments:

Linda Stoll said...

I love your October Organizing theme, Debby! I'm going to be back to sit with all your cool ideas.

You can never have enough ideas, right?

It's the follow-up that's the killer!

MaryMarzetta said...

Debby, I've been printing my recipes on printed paper that matches a 3-ringed binder I had made titled "Schweizer family recipes, made with love". Each time I make a recipe I have, I take a picture and slip it in the paper protector along with the recipe. Of course I have labeled dividers. My hope is to eventually have a book made for each of my children.

The Calico Cat said...

I keep my recipes in my e-mail - I like to "search" that way. I star the ones we really like...

Doreen said...

A binder has been working for me, so I will stick with that but I, also, have tons of cookbooks that haven't been opened for a year+!!!! I haven't figured out as to why I'm saving them!!!!! Church cb, Pillsbury Bake-Off cb, various organization fund-raising cb, and on and on and on!!!! Sigh......Time to attack 'em!!!!!!!!