Embrace Perfectionism

I have decided to start a new project.  Actually, it's an old project that I am now reviving because I finally know what I want to do.

About a year ago I got fed up with my recipe mess.  I haven't been able to find anything and I never know what to cook for dinner because I am buried in books, scraps of paper, printed recipes, notebooks, etc.  Half of them are things I have never even cooked and about a fourth of what is left are things I used to cook all the time and have forgotten about.  So I find myself cooking the same things over and over and I'm getting pretty tired of them. 

So I went looking for a good way to organize my recipes.  There is an organizing blog I visit often that's all about quick and easy organizing, so I started there.  They had a great plan that involved keeping the recipes exactly as they are (not rewriting them) and putting them in binders.  She had put them in sheet protectors and they ranged in size from recipe cards to full page printed recipes and even included some little scribbled notes.  Then, to tackle an enormous stack of magazines she had, she cut out the recipes, along with the picture, glued them to a sheet of paper and dropped them in a sheet protector also.  It was a "quick and easy" organizing plan and I was all for making it "quick and easy" so I went ahead and started.  Ha!

I should know better than to think I can do ANYTHING "quick and easy"... it's just not in my nature.  I prefer the "slow and painstakingly complicated" method.  I put all the recipes I had printed and sitting in piles in sheet protectors.  I even had some "special" sheet protectors that were divided in 4 that were (almost) perfect for 4x6 cards.  I say "almost perfect" because they weren't perfect at all...I had to trim down every recipe to make it fit.  It was annoying and looked terrible. Some were hard to read because seams were in the way, others required more than one 4 x 6 pockets so the recipe had to be "continued" in the next pocket. I didn't even begin to touch the magazines. I hated it. The whole ugly mess was worse than what I started with.  I don't do quick and easy...the two of us just aren't friends.

I revisited the blog about how to organize to see what I had done wrong.  The basic tenants of her tips were these:

1. Redoing or rewriting the recipes is a waste of valuable time.
2. It just doesn't matter what the finished product looks like, as long as you can find what you're looking for and it's legible.
3. If you take too long to organize, you'll never finish.

While I know all these things to be true, that just doesn't help me.  *Sigh*

Enter perfectionism.

I like things to look good.  I like them to be perfect and neat.  If I do it the "quick and easy" way and it looks awful, it won't matter that I can find it, all I'll ever think while I'm looking is "look how awful that looks...I am a failure!"  Ha ha...  I laugh, but it isn't really all that funny.  But it leads me to only one conclusion...

It is time to embrace my perfectionism.

I went back to the internet to search some more and found EXACTLY what I want.  It requires redoing all my recipes, buying a bunch of (kind of expensive) supplies, and starting completely over.  AWESOME!

Yes, redoing my recipes is taking me some time...but the funny thing is, I LIKE DOING IT!  It doesn't bother me that it takes time--I want it to be just so.  I want all the notes I've scribbled to be beautifully typed and legible.  I want all the recipes to be the same size, in a matching font, with all the abbreviations the same and in a single format.  And I want to put them all in cutesy little binders that I decorate myself, with an index and page numbers and matching decorated dividers.  And then I want to stack them on the counter next to my cookbooks so I can admire them every day.  It doesn't matter that the size of binders I want to use is expensive and the sheet protectors are even worse--I want them to be exactly the way I want them to be, so I will pay to make them so, whether it is with my time or money (or both...as in this case).  So that's what I'm doing.

So, for those that can do "quick and easy", I applaud.  There is certainly nothing wrong with that way, if that's what suits you.  But I need to not let other people tell me that doing things the way I want them is a waste of time and effort because it's what makes me happy...and whose to say what is a valuable use of time anyway?  Perfectionism is not a flaw.  I don't need a support group.  It would probably be easier to stop breathing...