Show of hands: Do you have a pile of recipes ...

perhaps I should just scan / save the recipes I use most often onto my computer... then I'll only have to search ONE place for them!

Yes!!! It's next on my list for purging.

See, now that is my fear. That I will pin something, and it won't be there when I want it because the blog shut down or whatever. That has happened a few times and I was so disappointed that I could no longer find that recipe.

Not anymore ... I tossed the whole lot because I knew I would never use them   

Now I just have a gorgeous collection of cookbooks that I never use   

I used to.

Then I moved. The boxes/baskets of those clippings were heavy!!! I knew they were all from magazines so I just tossed all of them!

I then stopped buying so many magazines!

I will make a point to make the recipes I do find right away to see if they are keepers!

Yes and I have no inclination to either cook the recipes or throw out the recipes. #fuzzylogic

Not anymore. I used to have a 3-ring binder full of them and I just purged it and threw out 90% of them. They were taking upspace and I never tried them out. Online is the only way to go for me.

I have a lot of clipped recipes, but every week I sit down with the grocery sale paper and flip through the file (I actually have 4 different file folders, they are sorted into dessert/main dish/side dish/breakfast and breads) and pick out some new recipes to try that use some of the things that are on sale.

I would never stop clipping recipes! We love trying new recipes, and I don't like online recipes, I like having them physically in front of me.

I know that I won't ever try all of the recipes I have clipped, because new ones are always going into the files. And sometimes when I am deciding between 2 new recipes to try, the deciding factor is "well, I know THIS one has been in the file for a really long time".

Sure do. I like the ideas to switch to online/Pinterest.

When i'm subscribing to a magazine I do, but usually I dont' have some thing like that to clip. There was a year I was subscribing to BHG, Real Simple, and Rachel Ray all at the same time. I clipped a ton that year and found a few family favorites (Like teriyaki sloppy joes) but most of the binder of recipes I saved from that year have never been used.

I have several recipe books I keep around for one or two specific recipes though.

I love to cook and love to try new recipes. I can't tell you how many "systems" I've had over the years to organize my recipes.

About a year ago, I settled on a means to handle all those clipped recipes. It's not only working for those but it's developing into a way to organize ALL my recipes.

I have lots of cookbooks and for many, many years I have written on the covers the name and page number of any recipe I wanted to remember to make again. But then when you get soooooo many recipe books... which book is it in? So I'd take them down one by one and squint at the cover to see if the recipe I was looking for was in that book. Laborious, but it worked.

Then there were all those clipped recipes. I started gluing them to recipe cards, but geesh. Too bulky. Then I started gluing them into a spiral notebook with dividers. That worked, but eventually the book was as full of recipes I had tried and crossed out as the ones that were keepers. That seemed counterproductive.

So I started using file folders. I have a couple dozen broken down into categories that make sense to me (beef, poultry, pork, lamb, game meat, seafood, pasta, grilling, sides, salads, soups & stews, "whole" desserts, cookies and candies, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, hors d'oeuvres, dinner party menu recipes, various ethnic categories, breads, breakfast, and so forth). Each folder has a red sheet of paper in it. Untried recipes go in front of the red sheet with tried-and-liked behind it. If I try it and we don't like it? I toss it.

That was working so well, I've taken it a step further. When I make a recipe out of one of my recipe books or from my recipe file, I write the name of the recipe and location (name of book & page number usually) on the front of the appropriate folder. So now if I see great looking pork chops at the market or we have a taste for salmon... I grab the appropriate folder and scan for either a new recipe to try or an old tried-and-true.

This may sound complicated, but it's actually quite simple. It appeals to my sense of organization and has been easy for me to use and maintain. I really like a printed out recipe in front of me. I just haven't been able to convert to digital. Plus, I would miss seeing all those wonderful old handwritten recipes in my grandmother's handwriting, or my husband's grandmother, or my mother. We've all written in the margins of recipe books for years. There's history there I just can't let go of.

Wow... long-winded answer to your question, huh? Short answer? Yes, I have piles of recipes.

Of course I do! My recipes are put into different coloured folders: red for beef and lamb, yellow for cakes and slices, pink for chicken and pork, green for vegetables etc etc. I recently went through the folders and culled a lot of recipes, but to be honest I put more new ones in there than what I throw out.