Sigh. I'm staring at stacks and stacks of old cooking magazines and trying to figure out

C

carianna-in-wa

Well-known member
how long I should keep them. My archives are clearly out of control, but I hate to throw them away! I just reluctantly put all of my pre-year-2000 Cook's Illustrated on the purging pile, and am now facing the towers of Bon Appetit, Gourmet, and Fine Cooking.

What do you all do for this dilemma? Anyone have any creative ideas or organization tips for my mountains of magazines?

 
I clip or scan the recipes I want and toss the magazines after a few months. I subscribe to double

issues of Fine Cooking and Cook's Illustrated and have all the issues of both to keep as part of my cookbook library. I've been spending a lot of time organizing all those clippings and printed recipes and that's another matter entirely, also a big problem.

 
I've faced the same dilemma. I decided a while back that I would go through them and

type out the recipes that looked most promising (this was before I knew that epicurious had so many of them available). If they didn't seem worth typing out, then I had to do without them. That narrowed it down to just a few recipes per magazine.

I've saved certain issues, like the Bon Appetit May Editions.

 
After a few months of stacking I sit down, clip what I want and recycle the magazines

I have file cabinets that are neatly organized by type of recipe and the clipped recipes or articles go in there. About twice a year I take out one of the big files, reorganize it and toss recipes I will never make. My system has worked for me for about 35 years.

 
I just did a cooking magazine clear out.

Having not looked at them again after two years, out they went. Most were recycled; the newer ones were brought to the waiting room of a local hospital. The recipes worthy of redoing had already been typed and placed into my computer file.

 
I decided that my stacks of recipes and magazines was out of hand and this is what I have done.>>>

I took out all the T&T recipes only, got some heavy printing paper and printed the categories in large, bold type with a graphic of whatever matched it. Made a front cover called "Orchids Favorites" and put it all together. Then I went to Kinko's and had it bound for $5.00. It is magnificent! In fact, I just had #2 bound! They are both about 2" thick and now are on my shelf at the ready whenever I want one of my favorite recipes I have gathered from here or a magazine. I don't put any recipe in that has not been tried and loved and I can see that #3 is well on it's way. LOL

 
I have all the Sunset magazines form 1972 to now in boxes in my garage.

My husband built shelves w/ sliding doors for them but STILL they are taking over! Thanks for these suggestions for ways to "weed out" Maybe this will be the "project" for the coming year. I probably will use our copier to copy the ones I use consistently. It is VERY difficult for me to toss anything, it's genetic.
BTW I also have BA for the last couple of years, some of which haven't made it out of their plastic wrapper...

 
ooh! ooh! you can send all those Cook's Illustrated to ME! *g*

When my Taste of Home magazines started coming, I would xerox the index page of each one, and keep the indexes in a binder while I bundled the issues (by year) with twine and stored them away. That way, if I needed to find something quickly, it was much easier. Thankfully, I haven't gotten to the "purging" stage yet.

 
Carianna, I went through this problem last year

After years of saving, storing, and moving hundreds of very heavy old Gourmets and other magazines, I finally realized, I NEVER OPEN THEM, I look online and basically find the same information.

So I plopped them all in the dumpster except the October, November, and December issues, when most cooking mags swell up with all the goodies of the season. And I'm about ready to throw those saved ones out, because I discovered that my local used bookstore has the beautiful bound Gourmet annuals that contain just the recipes with none of the filler, fluff, and ADS, for around $5. So far I've bought about 10 years worth and they look so much better on the bookshelf than old magazines, and take up so much less space.

Haven't missed them!

 
sunset also has recipe annuals. I have several but am a couple

of years behind. Glad to hear of several solution options for this "growing" problem.

 
that got me thinking -- what a wonderful Christmas gift that would make

for my 2 girls and newly married niece! Guess I better get cracking right now! Did you just bind your T&T recipes, or did you photocopy them or retype them (to make it all consistent)?

 
Cheezz, here's what I did. On the first book I printed out all the recipes>>

that are my favorite and used the most often from my Master Cook program on the puter. Then I gathered up any recipes on recipe cards or ones that had never gotten typed up and typed and printed them. I make each recipe title a larger font size, bold and centered on the page. When I download anything off the net I only download the text, non of the other stuff that always comes with it. Like Foodtv or Gourmet etc. Just a clean recipe page. And each category sheet is a much heavier weight and works really well. When I "fan" through the book, the heavier paper makes it just pop to the next category so it's easy to find the section that I want. I had a lot of fun finding pictures and art for each category. There is a picture that matches everything out there in net space!
Kinko's does a wonderful job of the binding. They put on a clear front sheet and a heavy black backing. Have fun!

 
And yesterday and today was a real reminder why I have a set rule>>>

not to put ANY recipe into my little personal cookbooks until they have been tried. The pork burgers form Food Networks Burger challange (winner I might add) was horrible!!! That recipe went into the bin and today a penne pasta from Cooking Light and a muffin recipe I don't know from where. Horrible! Haven't had that many flops in I don't know how long. That is why I love this place. You can trust that it will taste great if it comes from these super cooks. Nice.

 
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