Cookbooks: Should they stay or should they go?

September 19th, 2011 by everydayminimalist

When I finally attacked my library to try and figure out what books should stay and what should go, I found some categories easier than others.

Reference books that are not important in my life/line of work such as how to properly cite a source using all the different formats, were quick to make it to the “donate” pile.

Books I haven’t read in years and don’t plan on reading again, left quickly.

But cookbooks are definitely one of the categories that I found quite difficult at first to cut down upon.

With cookbooks, it’s not like e-book readers have advanced so far that you can have full-sized coloured pages for cookbooks without having to keep flipping the page to get to what you need.

So this is how I did it…

My cookbook rules were:

  • If I can find it on the internet, I don’t need to keep the book (American food)
  • If I don’t really use the recipes, I don’t need to keep the book (Indian cuisine went)
  • If it doesn’t have full colour photos or is very appealing, I don’t keep it
  • If it isn’t a truly sentimental piece (like my mom’s handwritten family cookbook)

In the end, I only kept 3 cookbooks: one on Thai cooking, another on ingredients (spices and the whole bit!) and the last is one I will never get rid of.

It is a a fully hand-written cookbook of all of the recipes my mother has ever made or kept a copy of, complete with referenced photographs and side notes.

I can never give away that cookbook, although I am thinking of turning it into a digital format just in case they get lost or damaged.

How do/did you decide which cookbooks stayed or went?

Posted in Decluttering & Organizing | 9 comments

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  • Mel

    I find the same issue with pairing down my cookbooks. Some I find easy to get rid of by copying out the handful I like on recipe cards in my cute recipe box. The golden ones are all in there, even the ones from the internet that I use regularly in one small tidy box. wild horses couldn’t make me get rid of my three go to cookbooks though. There is something to be said to cook from a book and written with comments in the margins.

    Time to go through the ten based on your criteria to see what shakes out.

  • Pberdoo

    I find recipes I like online, copy them, and then immediately paste it onto a document I  created a few years ago and labeled “Killer Recipes.”  The recipes aren’t in any particular order, the fonts are completely different, but I know that I have that recipe…and that gives me peace without needing to get the cookbook.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=603752542 Kimberly Oberklaus

    I’m struggling with this right now. I have 30 cookbooks. I love them all for different reasons…but I don’t think I will ever cook every single recipe in every single cook book. There are things in the books I won’t even try. Why do I do this to myself? One book I will definitely be keeping is my bread machine cookbook….but everything else I am struggling with. I have recently decided that my storage for my cookbooks (a really crappy Ikea shelf that I bought already used and is falling apart) is no longer allowed in my home. I’ve been considering scanning my favorite recipes and putting them on my laptop…but that seems like A LOT of work. *sigh*

  • Anonymous

    I bought the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and that’s it. I only have that one cookbook. For other recipes I just go online. Honestly though if there was a digital version of that book I would buy it and download it. Overall I don’t consider cookbooks to be important since there are so many recipes on the web. I only bought it because there wasn’t an e-book version of it. 

    Plus the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook has basic cooking instructions, utensil instructions, and all sorts of recipes. The instructions are very basic and I don’t feel like I need to be Martha Stewart to cook a decent meal.

  • Matthew M

    I would just download lots of cookbooks to a tablet (seems like extra but is useful for minimalism) or laptop. Saves tons of space.

  • http://www.carlywilson.com Carly

    I actually don’t have any cookbooks at home but I do have a journal where I write down all my recipes that I found off the internet that I like.  I also copied down some of my old favorites from my mom’s cookbooks in there.  I have nothing against cookbooks, though.  I have a friend with a small woden bookcase in her kitchen full of cook books and I find it very charming.

  • susan

    I have about 50 cookbooks.   One day, our internet went out and I wailed ‘how am I going to cook?  The internet is out!’.    I actually do page through the cookbooks when trying to get an idea of what to cook.  Other times, I hit the internet. 

  • http://www.Foyupdate.blogspot.com FoyUpdate

    I write a food blog and I use it constantly to look up recipes.  When I cut 1/3 of what I owned last winter I went through the cookbooks.  Of the 10 or so I owned I kept one Better Homes and Gardens because it has all the basic simple recipes I could want and then Cook’s Illustrated’s New Best Recipe because it is the best cookbook I have ever owned.  I love how they explain how they tested the recipe and why it works.  I also have three albums of handwritten recipes from grandmas and great aunts.  And you’re right, I use the internet a lot more than the actual books. 

  • Anonymous

    Love it! I only have one cookbook, even though I may be able to find the same recipes on the internet. My goal is just to make photo copies of the recipes I actually like, then turn the book over to friends. I have to say, though, that I wouldn’t be able to be cookbook-free without great recipes sites! I often turn to them over cookbooks because they have actually been tested & reviewed, so you don’t waste your time trying something that sucks.