Recipe Keeping: The Cloud's the Limit

When I was in my middle-school home economics class, we got recipe boxes. I was so excited to fill mine like my mom's and grandma's. When I started seriously cooking as an adult, it was obvious a box wasn't going to cut it.

For a while, I printed recipes from the computer or tore out magazine pages and slipped the papers into page protectors and stored them in binders on a bookshelf in my kitchen. That worked to keep the recipes clean while cooking and all in one place. But I got busy (lazy) and started just stuffing recipes in there out of order or just keeping whole magazines.

It wasn't very organized and more than once I bought the ingredients to make something and couldn't find the recipe! Frustrating!

When I got really busy, I would stash the magazines I got from gift subscriptions in tote bags, boxes and shelves until I had a chance to read them. There might be something in there that I needed!

Well, three people and two dogs live in this little house and these old magazines have got to go!

I've decided to take advantage of the technology available to me.

This isn't new to me. For a few years, when I saw something online I liked and wanted to make, I would usually copy and paste and save it to a file on my computer. Or I emailed it to myself.

And I have long thought of this blog as a safe place to keep my favorite recipes. When I can't find the hard copy of something, I search my blog and pray I've recorded it here.

In my latest effort to declutter my house and organize recipes I love and those I'd like to try "someday", I am using . When I see a recipe I would like to try, I pin it. As long as the link doesn't disappear, I can find it again when I'm ready to make it. When the recipe doesn't have a photo -- because that's what you pin -- I have been copying the recipe and pasting it. Unless the recipe comes from a website you can join and save recipes in a virtual box. I am a member of RachaelRayMag.com and TasteOfHome.com -- two sources for many of my favorite recipes. If I see a recipe in any of those magazines, I can go to their sites, look it up and save it there.

How do you store recipes?