Wednesday, December 5, 2007

I have a problem.

I actually have many problems, but most of them aren't worth discussing here. One that is, is my problem with clutter. Now most of you don't live with me, so you may or may not be aware of this problem. I am not the neatest person in the world. I tend to leave things in piles. I try to make them organized piles, but nonetheless, if you follow me around the house on any given day you will see the piles I leave behind. Knitting in one pile. My mail neatly stacked in various locations. And in the bedroom, piles of clothing from the last few days. Somehow actually putting it in the hamper requires too much effort. Dear lord, I am lazy. Anyway, so this is all problematic, but mainly for Adam, since he's the one who has to deal with these piles on a daily basis. What is problematic for me is when I do not have my piles. While these piles may appear to be clutter to the outside eye, for me, this is my way of organizing. I need order in my life. I become paralyzed, unable to accomplish anything if I am lacking in order. I have been known to reorganize my yarn stash repeatedly because I can't take it all in unless I have it sorted in some logical fashion (initially by color, but that didn't work for me, so now it is by yarn weight). Recently though I have been paralyzed by the lack of organization when it comes to cooking.

I love to cook, and I'm pretty good at it, if I do say so myself. I get recipes from various sources: cookbooks, magazines, the internet. My problem is how to organize these recipes. I make something good, and then I forget where I found the recipe. It gets lost, never to be made again. There is no order to my recipe collection, and as a result, I find it very difficult to cook on a daily basis. I hate going to the grocery store, because without having n idea of what I'm going to cook, I have no idea what to buy. So I need help. How best to keep track of my recipes? I need a good list of basic things that I can have ingredients on hand for, so I don't have to research recipes everytime I want to cook dinner. And I need a place to keep those more elaborate, but so good it will be worth making again at some point recipes so they don't get lost forever. I also need some way to keep track of all of those things I want to make. And I don't want to use the computer for this. I need a good old fashioned recipe box. Or something. Any ideas?

3 comments:

lola coca-cola said...

I keep a 3 ring binder with recipes I have printed out or cut out.

Unknown said...

Recipe organizing is also on my mind!

Ditto the 3 ring binder. I also put the recipes in those pre-3-hole-punched clear plastic document protectors, so when I take them out of the binder to cook, I don't get goo all over the recipes.

Unfortunately I have also gotten lazy. There is a huge stack of paper recipes in the front pocket of the binder, waiting to be tucked into protectors. Nor is the binder sorted in any fashion. I think some sturdy plastic tab dividers might work for this.

Anonymous said...

I was thinking that a photo album could be good for this. One with either the pockets, or those plastic sheet things that "stick" to the paper backing.