Are you a "Clippings Junkie"?

My good friend, Rene, is a “clippings junkie”. She’s very crafty, loves to cook, and LOVES to bake. Rene subscribes to about three cooking and baking magazines, as well as three or four craft magazines.

She cannot help but clip page after page out of these magazines. In fact, once it’s been cast to the recycling bin, the magazine is about half its original thickness.

Rene has been a “clippings junkie” for about six years, and she now has an entire filing cabinet dedicated to her habit. One problem with Rene’s clippings is that she only makes one out of every ten recipes she saves (she’s a working mother of two). The other problem is the massive paper clutter. After the recipes are clipped, they’re stacked in a pile, and then filed in “the cabinet”.

I came up with a system to help Rene be more “choosy” and realistic about which recipes to clip:

Time Rating: based on how much time you have to make dinner on:

   • weeknights: 30 min (1 star)
   • weekends: 45 min – 1 hr (2 stars)
   • holidays: 2 or more hrs (3 stars)

PLUS

Ingredients Rating: what you need to buy in addition to items you “keep around” (food staples):

   • 1-3 items (1 star)
   • 4-6 items (2 stars)
   • 7-9 items (3 stars)

After going through each month's magazines, and rating each recipe she likes, she may choose fifteen total, which is about four per week (at least ten recipes must be 1 star).

Recipes from the current month go in a special binder that’s kept in the kitchen to be used. At the end of the month, her favorite three can be filed for future use.

You may not be as crazy as Rene is about clipping magazines, but where could you use this system to improve your home?

Posted October 16, 2007, filed in Clutter Control Products, Living Simply, Less is More