Declutter recipes

New Year's Resolution: have less stuff.  Although I have been lost in fabric-land of late, I have also been working slowly in various areas of the house on decluttering the excess stuff.  Lots of paperwork. In boxes, on shelves, in paper sacks under tables and beds.  Ugh.

So, it was time to tackle the recipes.  I have gotten rid of lots of cookbooks.  I have even ripped the two recipe pages that I actually use out of a cookbook and discarded the rest.  Yay: less stuff!  I bought index dividers for my recipe box, and inserted them in appropriate places this week. 

Last bit to tackle: recipes, collected since 1975 (ouch!) from magazines, newspapers, friends and neighbors.  Stored in a 3-ring binder, in labeled file folders, and in pocket-folders--with no rhyme or reason to their location.

Here is the "before" picture of this disorganized system.  Not that it takes up so much room (about 4" of shelf space), but I can't find the things I want when I want them.

I threw out more than 75% of the recipes, and arranged the remainder into labeled sections of the 3-ring binder.  It feels wonderfully organized.