Organizing My Kitchen Part 3

I haven't worked on my total kitchen organization project in a while as I have been working on other projects but today I tackled my cookbook area. For quite a while, I have had a desire to have my cookbooks organized and available in a way that would make meal planning a bit easier. Before my organizational efforts, my cookbooks were crammed into two cabinets with no specific organizational scheme. The cookbooks were difficult to find, and difficult to get out and put back in the cabinet due to the overcrowded nature of the cabinets.

To complete this project I completed all of the following tasks:

• I moved the phone books to a different location so that only cookbooks were included in the three cabinets.
• I cleaned out the middle cabinet so that it could be used for cookbook storage as well. I tossed some things, put a few things in the Goodwill box for donation, and I moved a few things to a better location. I also moved the shelf up quite a bit so any size cookbook would fit on the bottom shelf and the top shelf could be used for rarely used cookbooks. Cleaning out the middle cabinet gave me three cabinets for cookbook storage.
• I culled 12 cookbooks that I never use and posted them on PaperBackSwap.
• I cleaned out all of the paper clutter in the cubbies below the middle cabinet and put it in the paper recycling bin.
• I organized the remaining cookbooks into the following categories: Gooseberry Patch cookbooks; multi-purpose cookbooks; baking cookbooks, food storage/bulk cooking cookbooks; Sue Gregg cookbooks; slow cooker cookbooks; cooking magazines; and low-fat/weight loss cookbooks. I put all of the cookbooks that fell into the same categories next to each other on the shelves.
• I gathered all of the cooking magazines and put them in a magazine holder. I do need to purchase one more magazine holder to hold my collection.
  

The entire project did take me about 3 hours to complete (with some interruptions from my boys) but I am thrilled with the result! My cookbooks are now organized, they are easy to access, and I'm no longer wading through cookbooks that I don't really use.