I have a habit that seems to have turned into a problem. I love saving recipes and I think it's genetic, which I will explain shortly. I also have an ongoing struggle with organizing things (including my thoughts, but I've discussed that before).
So, when I moved my cookbooks out of my kitchen to prepare for some renovations, I had a pile of booklets and papers that had to be sorted. It turned out that most of that pile consisted of recipes printed from websites or clipped from newspapers. Lots of recipes.
As I mentioned in Becoming Un-Stuffed, I've also been sorting through stuff that moved into my house when we cleaned out my Mom's house and a lot of that stuff had been moved into her house when she cleaned out her parents' house. What I have discovered is that my Grandmother saved recipes from newspapers, and my Mom also saved recipes from newspapers, along with recipe cards and booklets that came with food products or kitchen equipment. There are duplicates of several of those booklets and I actually have three different printings of the same cookbook - they are all a little different and one can never have enough cook books in my opinion.
Anyway, back to the recipes I've saved.
As I am desperately trying to keep things organized, I decided to start using binders and sheet protectors for sorting all those recipes (and reference materials - like gardening tips and craft projects). There are 20 so far, plus 3 or 4 report folders. (Most of the binders were salvaged/recycled from my daughters' school binders.) One of those binders was a gift from Dad and Mother-step many years ago and is specifically designed for saving recipes saved from magazines or newspapers. It's pretty full.
Anyway, it was when I realized that I probably have 3 copies of the same recipe that I've printed from a website that I really understood that I need to break the habit (using that Critical Thinking skill). Obviously, that recipe gets used, but that's why I need to get things organized better. And that starts with stopping the printing - breaking the habit.
What habit are you trying to break? Do you save recipes? Do you lose good recipes nearly as fast as your found them? How do you stay organized?
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