My Attempt at Organization

I have never been a very organized person.  Just ask my mom.  Even going through elementary school my desk was always the one with papers stuffed in it and finished but not turned in homework filling every part of it.  It just seems like too much work to organize something that is just going to get messy again.  But as I have gotten older I have found that it is much easier in the long run to have things organized.

I love to cook, collect new cookbooks, and find new recipes.  I have a whole cupboard full of cookbooks and recipe cards but up until I finally finished my project of cooking organization all of my cards and recipes were a mess.  I had little recipes everywhere and I could not keep them straight.  It was such a mess that it was easier to just go out to eat or cook something very easy with little effort.  I hated dinner time and I began to really hate cooking. 

Around Christmas this last year Lindsey Karr and I decided that our new year's resolution would be to cook dinner a lot more often than we were because she was having similar problems.  So we came up with an idea for a meal calendar.  I painted a wooden framed magnetic board, applied ribbon daily separators, and sewed little envelopes to hold the extra monthly labels and meals that we may not be using at that time. The magnets are great so I can change the meals around however we want.  It took me about four months but I finally finished the project.  It took me a long time to go through my recipes and pick the ones that I knew Eric and I liked to eat.  We have experiment days about once a week and those are usually my favorite days along with nights we spend with our parents and out to eat nights. 

 (sorry about the big bright spot from the flash right there in the middle)

This calender helped me become more organized than I was before but all of my recipe cards remained out of order and it was still causing me to shrug off the strict meal plan listed on the calendar.  I tried putting them in boxes or folders but I still just hated to search through each and every card for whatever recipe I wanted to find.  My sister Sarah gave me the idea of gluing the edge of each card into a journal so that the recipes would be organized in a book.  I thought that was a wonderful idea so I set to work getting them into a journal.  Luckily I didn't glue at first because I filled up that journal very quickly with many cards left over and no room to grow.  At that point I was about to just give up the whole thing when I stumbled across the composition notebooks at Walmart for 75 cents each.  I bought eight of them and some fabric to cover them.  After I covered them I embroidered titles and attached them to the covers and then glued in the recipes. 

I now have eight new cookbooks that are custom made by me.  All of that work has paid off because I now only have to plan meals once a month and I can always find my recipes within a minute or two. 

My cupboard with my cookbooks in it is about full but it's looking pretty good, in my opinion.  All of my handmade cookbooks are on the bottom right.  It's been nice getting that project out of the way.  Cooking isn't such a chore any more and I love having just a little bit more organization in my chaotic life.