Saturday, January 24, 2009

I did it! Notebook organization part 1 complete!

I've mentioned my notebooks once or twice on my blog; I started my first one when I was 18 years old, only 3 or 4 a handful of years ago. (ahem.) Back then, and now, I wrote down recipes that appealed to me, and then also ideas of my own. When I pulled out all my books to take a picture of them for my Christmas gift post, I also unearthed the foot high stack of loose pages waiting to be cut and pasted into notebooks, along with a separate pile of old magazines, that needed to be re-read and any worthy recipes ripped out and also pasted in.

What a disaster. I honestly think that since I started my first book all those many years ago I've never been caught up; there's always been a pile of papers, or a magazine with pages waiting to be ripped out mocking me. So I decided that enough was enough, and I vowed that I would get all my books organized and one way or another be rid of all the loose papers and old magazines.

And a month later, here I am, organized and good to go.

I was missing a book when I took this picture, but found it an hour later. I have 14 books total. 12 full and 2 works in progress. 1 work in progress is a manual/conversion/info book, not an actual recipe notebook.

All the completed books are now full and each have a table of contents. The 2 I am still working on will get ToC's when they are full. I am thinking about doing a master index of all books, and storing it on my computer, but that seems a little daunting right now, I've got some other stuff to do around the house first. But it would be nice to know exactly which book Scott's Shrimp Dip recipe is in, instead of going: "I think it's in the black one. No, the other black one. No, the other black one."

I didn't put all the books back in their case after they were organized; it's been fun leafing through them and being reminded of people, places and things. And I've decided, to celebrate my (amazing for me lately) feat of being organized, I'm going to cook one recipe out of each of my 13 books, and share with you, the people. As Ina would say, How good will that be?

See yous tomorrow for a recipe from the book that begat it all, Sara's Cookbook #1.

8 comments:

Amanda at Little Foodies said...

That's so cool, will check back tomorrow for book #1 recipe.

Debbie said...

I am so impressed! Maybe I need to do that to my notebooks.
Job well done!

Lien said...

This is a real treasure you have! A really daunting task to put them in a sort of system in the computer, but maybe fun too when you finally would see the endresults!
Great job

Deb in Hawaii said...

You are amazing! My recipe files are 2 good-size boxes of ones taken from magazine spanning back quite a few years and two large unfinished binders that were half-hearted attempts to organize them. I keep looking at the boxes and binders but haven't started on them again. Maybe you will be my inspiration? (or do you hire out for recipe re-organizations!?) ;-)

Brilynn said...

If you want to come organize my recipes and books too, that would be super...

Karen Baking Soda said...

I started a new (best of hehe) one a year ago and have a post ready since then... I think I'll take your lead and do something about it! You did a great job already Sara!

Donna-FFW said...

I LOVE IT!! do the same thing, although now Ive incorporated them into a binder with photos of my tried and trues!! Nice to know I am not the only one:)

Donna-FFW said...

I LOVE IT!! do the same thing, although now Ive incorporated them into a binder with photos of my tried and trues!! Nice to know I am not the only one:)