I must have around 1400 cookbooks by now. When we did some house renovations and made a large study, we have a lot of built in bookshelves made and my collection as well as all our other books went there. And then...
Husband got a new job 2 1/2 years ago which involved moving countries. Give away cookbooks? Would I give away my children?? We are currently in our second rental property here so moving that many books each time is a trial. However, we've bought a whole lot of book shelves, including a couple we moved from home. I currently have my most used books and all my reference books in my study. The rest are shelved in an upstairs family area, or in shelves in the bedroom. Occasionally some books get demoted upstairs to make way for new books and review books.
I'm a food writer and do a lot of cookbook reviewing so my book tally keeps growing. With the review books, I often give these away if they won't serve as reference books or are not the sort of books I would use. My 28-y-o son snaffles all the blokey books and the easy-recipes-with-great-results books for when it's his turn to cook for his flatmates. Likewise cookbooks for cooking with/for kids go to friends with young families.
I think we have one more house move to make - either back to our own home in New Zealand or we will buy here in Australia where we now live. It will need plenty of wall space for bookshelves.
Someone mentioned using the Dewey system to catalogue one's books. I tried that. But unfortunately with all the difference sizes, it became difficult to house them using the same logic. I found myself standing in front of the bookshelf the other day wishing I could just Google my collection for the recipe I was looking for. I suppose in 10 years' time that won't be such a silly idea. Books will come with a digital index which we will add to our cookbook database. |