While I didn’t develop a new skill or hobby over the last nine
weeks, I do feel that my home is cleaner and more organized than ever. One of my organization projects was a
personal labor of love that gives the type of satisfaction that only a
recovering scrapbooker could truly appreciate.
I made two cookbooks. Just to be
clear, I didn’t write two cookbooks.
That would be an accomplishment worth celebrating.
Organization for me involves a lot of purging. There was one item (large collection of items,
is more accurate) that I could never seem to part with, to the point that it
was getting boarder-line hording. That item(s)
was my years’ worth of cooking magazines.
Since starting my career in the food industry and developing
my passion for cooking, I have had subscriptions to food magazines. All the food magazines. Stacks of Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Cook’s
Illustrated, Food Network Magazine, Cooking Light, Southern Living, Real
Simple, Martha Stewart Living, and Gourmet all graced my office, baskets in the
living room, and other hidden spots throughout the house. 15 years’ worth of magazines that even
survived a move. Yes, I moved into my
new home with old magazines. I couldn’t throw
them out. What if I want to make Anthony
Bourdain’s Cranberry Sauce from the November 2017 issue of Food & Wine and
I don’t have the magazine to reference? Yes,
this was boarder-line hoarder behavior I am describing, and I am fully
admitting to it.
After successfully purging clothes in my closet that didn’t
get worn, it was time to say goodbye to the magazines that were just taking up
space in the house. Or was it? Instead of tossing something I deemed so valuable
that I convinced Logan to pack them up and move to our new home, I decided to
repurpose them. First, I got to work re-reading
all the magazines looking for the recipes that caused me to hold onto the
magazines in the first place. I started
ripping page after page out of the magazines and recycling the books as I
went. It was a way for me to say goodbye
to my strange obsession without feeling like holding onto all the books was for
nothing. Now, instead of having 100s of
magazines laying around, I had condensed it to a few hundred pages of recipes.
Next comes the fun part. (Again, I realize that it isn’t
normal for someone to find all of this fun.)
Step 2 was to separate the recipe pages into categories. Each category had a dedicated folder that I
would throw the recipes in. I broke it
up into groups for types of meals, (breakfast, appetizers, desserts) as well as
proteins (beef, chicken, pork). A normal
person would probably stop there. I
could buy a filing box, have each folder tucked away, and call it done. I’m not normal…
Step 3 meant trimming down all the recipes to put them into
a reference book. My thought was that if
I have a recipe book that lived in the kitchen, I might use it more. Plus, as I admitted earlier, I was an avid scrapbooker
in the 90’s when it was ‘cool.’ I have
vivid memories of getting excited over beautiful papers and perfectly expressed
stickers that let the world know that we were indeed having a ‘good time’ in
that photo. As tempted as I was, I didn’t
pull out the fancy scissors for this job.
Many nights were spent binge watching Netflix, while cutting
and gluing in the living room. I am sure
our couch is full of tiny scraps of paper that will later get blamed on my
6-year-old. Voila, there you have
it. Two beautiful recipe books with years’
worth of magazine collections for easy reference without all the clutter, and
more importantly, another item checked off the bucket list. A project that was so personally satisfying
yet benefits no one else in the house.
Well… except for their bellies when I get cooking.
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