I had massive piles of cooking magazines, cookbooks and recipes I'd ripped out of various newspapers and magazines over the years that filled an entire bookshelf. Last year I got a heap of lever arch files and plastic sheets (I won't tell you how many boxes of them cos that would be embarrassing!!). Then I went through and pulled out all the recipes I really liked and could see myself making, put them all into plastic sheets and then filed them all in categories - chicken, casseroles, cheesecakes etc. I was pretty ruthless and ditched everything else.

It is fantastic in that now if I want a pasta dish, I've got all my recipes in one place and can just flick through and choose something. I'm trying to keep on top of it as I buy more magazines etc, and it was hard initially to rip pages out of books because I'm seriously OCD about how carefully I treat books in general, but its a lot more practical and useful now.