Too Much of a Good Thing is Too Much

I used to have this saying over my shelf of cookbooks:  " My collection of cookbooks far exceeds my ability to cook".   Now I'm pretty certain my collection of cookbooks exceeds at least my shelf space!  (After taking this picture, I found six more stashed somewhere else  - a sure sign of too many)!

We're painting the kitchen and that means moving everything out of the way.  When I moved the cookbooks , I was a bit amazed at size of the stack!  Really, I haven't opened some of these in years.  I've saved some because of one or two recipes, and honestly there are several in pristine condition because I've never used any of the recipes.

With so many great food blogs and recipe sites, I usually get new recipe ideas on-line. ( A few of my favorites are on my blog list to the right of this post).   If the recipe is a keeper, I send it to my recipe notebook on  OneNote.  Judging by the cookbook section at Barnes and Noble, the internet hasn't replaced print books, but I have read that e-cookbook sales are through the roof.  That makes sense - my dream kitchen would include a computer in the counter top, protected for spills (I'm a pretty messy cook). 

Here is the stack after some serious purging.  Much more manageable!  I only kept the ones I actually use - what a concept! 



I also had a stack of cooking magazines that got the boot.  I tore out the recipes I want to try, filed them in a folder, and the magazines went into the donate pile.  I'm going to make a recipe from that folder every week - if it's a keeper it'll be scanned into OneNote.  Maybe it makes sense to look into online versions of these magazines and save recipes directly from the site - skip the paper, save a tree and all that!

While this clean-out was prompted by a kitchen re-do, I've been doing some general decluttering.  I love going to estate sales, and I am amazed at how much stuff some people accumulate.  Sometimes it's just sad - I went to one sale that would have done a gift shop proud.  The old woman who lived there had over two hundred collectible dolls and enough brand-new Christmas decorations to start up her own store.  These are not hoarders of TV fame - these were clean, normal homes with just too much stuff.  Whenever I go to a sale like that, I come home and throw something away, just to be sure I don't go the the Dark Side!

I'm trying to follow the  "if one comes into the house, one like it goes out".  (This rule applies to everything except shoes, of course).