Trying to contain the madness

I have recently decided to take on my recipe collection and move it into a more manageable format.  I have the irritating feeling that this is something that I will be doing over and over throughout my life, similar to the never ending search for the perfect purse.  I am sure that I have plenty of company when it comes to scrambling around trying to find that one recipe that was so good!  Or, something I do often, find a recipe online that you love and not saving it, leaving yourself to keep trying random fish taco recipes for years never sure if they are the ONE.

I have a pretty admirable cookbook collection that is always growing, and having been a bookseller I have a very specific way that these are all arranged so that I can easily find what I am looking for.  Whenever I bring a new cookbook home I quickly sit down to read it, usually the whole way through (I know I’m a dork!) and I put markers on pages of recipes I definitely want to try. 

My problem is not the books but the loose recipes, from magazines and printouts, and the many saved recipes in my favorites tab and recipe folder on the computer.  This is one of the only things that, for a few different reasons, I don’t like using the computer for.  I have no interest in having my laptop in the kitchen with me, just asking to be spilled on, dropped or somehow burned, so storing my recipes on the computer just doesn’t work when it comes time to cook from them.   I have found that all the recipes I have saved on the computer I tend to forget about and never end up making anyway.  I have also been utilizing the public library and the extensive cookbook collection that they have, writing down the recipes that I know I want to try. 

So, I have recently started poking around the Internet to see what my options are and I ended up drooling over all the different types of recipe binders, boxes and journals that there are out there.  I am worried that I am going to end up with something that is pretty to look at and that will look great in my kitchen but will end up as something that I never use.  I am prepared to spend the time at the beginning to gather all my recipes from their current homes to shepherd them into to the new digs, but once that is done I want it to be easy to add all the future recipes to my family. 

I also have the other option of making my own, sort of scrapbook style, but I question whether I will do this.  I don’t want to spend lot’s of time making something pretty to then have it get all grody and food spattered in the kitchen.

Being that we are still on a pretty tight budget I have a while before I need to decide on (and actually be able to buy) my new recipe holder.  But, unlike most areas of my life, I have been having fun planning ahead and pondering the possibilities.  Have you found a foolproof method of storing your recipes?  What works best for you?