by Sharon Archer
I collect paper. I’ve collected it for years. An article here, an
article there. I have great mounds of it, box files of my old lecture
notes, filing cabinets with suspension files groaning with interesting
snippets of information. But I'm turning over a new leaf - I’m Organising! But this leaf turning is a slow process... and not easy.
So what prompted this latest round of Organising?
Well, I dropped my bulging folder of recipe snippets! I'd been collecting them for a long, long... long time. Gathering them up and then trying to find the one I'd been looking for in the first place, made me look at them - really look at them. And I realised... it was time to cull!
From 1981, in February a collection of cakes and biscuits and in June two pages of marvellous mince recipes. Thirty-one years ago when I liberated them from a New Idea magazine, I must have intended to try them. But I haven't.
From 1983, in May a tear-out leaflet on prepare ahead dinner parties and in August a page on bread - I haven’t tried these either!
A wad of undated delicacies and then a leap forward to 1996 for Warming Winter Wonders and 1999 for a complete herbs special. All untried.
I've taken stabs at disposing of some of these before but then hesitated at the last moment... after all, I might suddenly need this recipe or that one. But that's where my new leaf comes in ... I am
actually disposing of these pages... after I've blogged about them today!
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they're all fabulous recipes but if I haven't got around to trying them out some time in the last ten to thirty years then the chances are, I'm not going to!
So now, they're gone into the recycling. It’s just a tiny step... I have knitting patterns in another drawer... and gardening snippets somewhere else. But this recipe clear-out is a good start, don’t you think?!
So what about you?
Are you a hoarder?
Do you fight it or embrace it?
Do you have rules to keep it from turning into clutter?
Any tips to share?
