Recipe Organizing - Step 1

Ok, so I was all geared up for the challenge, I got all the recipes books that I own from various places in my home and plonked them on my dining table - and they looked like this !

Then I went through all the books and took out the books I wasn't likely to use - ever ! I could pass them onto someone who could - I managed to give away 3 and kept 60 !! Not exactly generous I know, but I'm quite keen on trying all the rest !

After sorting, I decided how to categorize them - now, you could make as many or as few categories as you like - I did Breakfast, Soups and drinks, Snacks, Accompaniments (rice, noodles, rotis, sauces and chutneys etc), Main Course & appetizers and finally Desserts - because I didn't want too many categories - but do what is comfortable for you!

Then in a spreadsheet I typed out the name of each book, the author, the category and left the book number blank (will explain) and also a column for notes - in which I can write any comments about the book! Then, I sorted the rows based on category type - so I had all the breakfast books in a row and the snacks and so on...I had some old labels that I stuck on the side of each book and used an OHP marker to number the books - so the breakfast books would be B1, B2 and so on and Snacks would be S1, S2 etc. This way each time I bought a new book, I would simply have to add it to the bottom of the list under whatever category it belongs to and there...you have your books neatly categorized !

Of course I used the help of my kids who found it very interesting and they even arranged all the books neatly according to number. Now, for the next step which is organizing individual recipes ! It is not as easy as this, I'm sure it will take some time for me to get every recipe out of my 60 books - but stay posted to see how it turns out !