Decluttering my recipe books
This week, I’m working on decluttering my kitchen area, and one of the areas that I set about doing today was decluttering my recipe books. I have a thin bookshelf in the kitchen that is full, and I do mean full, of my recipe books.
I’ve collected loads of recipe books over the years, and have recieved many as presents. It is one of those gifts, where when it comes to me, you couldn’t go wrong! The funny thing was, going through the bookshelf was like a timeline of my eating habits: the vegetarian cook books from when I stopped eating meat, the weight watchers cookbooks, the slimming world cook books, books from around the world, like the Thai cook book, mexican food and chinese. I even had the Women’s Institute books on making jams and preserves!
However, decluttering is all about keeping the things you love and letting go of the rest. So with that in mind, I took everything down, and there were knick knacks and other bits of rubbish on the shelves too, cleaned the unit, and then set about choosing what to put back.
Delia Smith, Jamie Oliver and The Hairy Bikers books went back first. Then the kids cooking books, Women’s Institute and world cooking books came next. Along the way, I found four gardening books, and some older flower arranging books. I loved the ideas in these, so kept them. I also found my old copy of The House Doctor and Feng Shui. These are now back on my reading list, as decluttering is very much tied to Feng Shui.
I knew one friend who would really appreciate the books that I was getting rid of, so I took them down to her that afternoon. Now the bookshelf is clean and you can actually see what books I have. I kept a couple of Christmas special magazines, but everything else went.
The bookshelf looks much better now. Yay!
Take care for now
Karen x