Then however, I had all these magazines left over. What to do? I don’t like reading them, so that’s out. I actually came up with lots of ideas about what to do with my old magazines, but my most used idea is my cookbook idea.

A lot of those magazines were women’s magazines (yawn) but most do have a rush of cool recipes. I spent a couple of hours ripping out all the recipes I wanted, then inserted them into plastic page protectors. Then I simply put them in a few notebooks (one each for, main dishes, baking, sweets). In each of the notebooks, I added some tabs to divide dish types – rice, beverages, cupcakes, etc.

Now I have these totally cool, very brightly photographed cookbooks. Much better than cookbooks you can buy. A bonus of my cookbooks is that the plastic page protectors keep ingredients off the pages. We all spill pumpkin pie mix sometimes.

My total cost: About $15 (it took a lot of page protectors) but that’s way cheaper than cookbooks full of stuff I won’t make.

If you don’t have magazines stock piled you can get some SUPER cheap:

• People always used to give me magazines for free, so you can ask your friends and neighbors.
• Thrift stores sell old magazines for soooooo cheap, like 10-50 cents per issue. Just make sure you don’t only get magazines from 1978 when whole fats were still all the rage
• Garage sales – many have cheap magazines.
• Free! Your doctor’s office (at the end of a month), your library, the dumpster or recycling center, the hair salon; plenty of places buy magazines and if you ask nicely you could score some.

This has actually helped me organize mealtime, because I didn’t add anything to the cookbooks that I wouldn’t be willing to make. It takes time to flip through a real cookbook, when half the recipes look lame. It also helped to split the books into categories. I never half to search for pasta sauce, because they’re nicely altogether. This project also gets bonus points for being green – you reuse magazines instead of tossing them.

Have you ever done this?

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Blisstree

Organize A Super Cheap Cookbook