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sherry_brighton

Where do you put cookbooks?

5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago

I have been racking my brain on where to put my cookbooks. I can put a shelf between one set of windows but there isn't a ton of room. My other option is somewhere in the pantry, but I don't want to sacrifice storage space. I completely forgot about them when planning the kitchen

Comments (28)

  • 5 years ago

    I keep mine on a bookshelf in the great room. The ones I use regularly are kept in the storage area of the island for easy access.

    Sherry Brighton thanked porkchop_z5b_MI
  • 5 years ago

    Shelves at the end of the island

    3 open shelves in upper cabinets in kitchen - keep my most used here

    top shelves of door'd cabinets

    small curio type case in the dining room - books only in there

    few shelves in the front room

    and the rest in a base cabinet in the front room


    I might have a cookbook buying problem :)

    Sherry Brighton thanked aziline
  • 5 years ago

    I have a sideboard with shelves in the dining area of my great room. The width of the top of the sideboard is full of cookbooks. I have many and I love them, but I only use a few anymore. I get most of my new recipes off of Pinterest these days. Maybe I should go through them and get rid of those I will never use again.

  • 5 years ago

    Bookshelf in the den/office. They don't need to be in the kitchen.

    Sherry Brighton thanked sushipup1
  • 5 years ago

    Mine are in a hallway cabinet that is the perfect size for them. The cabinet is full if I buy anything new something has to leave. This is a good thing, I already reduced my cookbook collection by close to 50% 6 years ago when I moved to this house.

    Sherry Brighton thanked jill302
  • 5 years ago

    I wanted to build shelves on the end my island for them but ended up using that space for a built in trash.
    So they take up a shelf in the pantry. I just inherited my mom’s cookbooks and the ones she had from my grandma, sooo….chips may get moved soon lol

    Sherry Brighton thanked justcallmepool
  • PRO
    5 years ago

    I have a coffee table with storage inside. I keep the ones I love there. I keep the ones I occasionally consult, in the back of a low cabinet where I have easy access but mostly at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I find I am using on line access more and more. I do cook most nights. So most things I don’t need recipes for. We use fresh ingredients and simple preparations. But there is something about my cookbooks that is very sentimental and have so many good memories with my Mom that I like keeping them near. Just a lovely feeling I guess. Thanks Mom!

  • 5 years ago

    When I remodeled my kitchen, I had a custom bookcase built to fit into what would be the “barstool side” of a peninsula. No one ever sat at the bar so didn’t lose any space plus we also have an oversized island. This nice long bookcase holds my large cookbook collection neatly and means I use them more frequently.

  • 5 years ago

    Cookbooks? It's all online. I don't need one more cluttery item. The only one I have is a Betty Crocker for the basics.

  • 5 years ago

    The few cookbooks I own are inside a cabinet over what used to be a kitchen desk. It now is a bank of drawers.

    I keep very few recipes but comprehend why others want cookbook collections.

  • 5 years ago

    Set aside the cookbooks that you really use /contain many recipes you use on a regular basis. These could be stored above the refrigerator, on a shelf above the door, or in a basket in a nearby mudroom.

    Go through the cookbooks that you don't use often and copy the few recipes that you do want into a notebook. Once you've copied those recipes, let go of those recipes.

    Cookbooks? It's all online. I don't need one more cluttery item.

    Disagree. I love having my favorite recipes collected into a notebook for several reasons:

    - I don't have to search online to find THAT RECIPE again. I mean, how many chicken casseroles are online?

    - If I alter a recipe in some way -- more vegetable, less sauce, whatever -- I write down what my family preferred.

    - Something I learned when I helped put together a church cookbook years ago: everyone writes recipes down differently. I thought through it and developed my own template: I like my ingredients in a left-side column /matched up with instructions in a right-side column. When I find a recipe that my husband calls "blue book worthy" (yeah, my recipe notebook is blue), I write it out MY WAY.


  • 5 years ago

    ​It's clutter. Storing it = clutter. I've moved 16 times in 25 years; I don't need cookbooks, drawers of index cards, or even the slightest hint of a binder that I have to box up and find a shelf or drawer for.  Online recipes make for variety vs following the same old instructions. I learn more about a specific food from blogs than a cookbook. Change it up - if someone doesn't like it, they should cook next time.


    If my husband likes a dish he should write it down. I'm not responsible for it all.


    I think it's old fashioned and I'm 47 yrs old.

  • 5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    Mine most used ones are on a shelf in my walking pantry. My kitchen has decent storage, and I don't have a huge number of kitchen gadgets, so there's room (and I value the cookbooks more than most of the gadgets 😉

  • 5 years ago

    I have almost 50 downloaded on my Ipad, and about 75 in a bookcase in my living room .

    Plus I subscribe to several cooking and baking magazines, also in the bookcase.

    i use my cookbooks and Pinterest for recipes every single day.

  • 5 years ago

    @justcallmepool how cute. An attempt at being socially current by using a dated reference.  Houzz is for traditionalists; it's nice to ruffle the starched skirts that leave little to the imagination (also lacking on the forum).

  • PRO
    5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    My office is open attached to my kitchen/dining room. There is a built in bookshelf I have full of cookbooks, plus I have another bookrack and a ladderback that has cookbooks filling it. The medicinal cookbooks are shelved with the botanical books on the shelf built in under my desk. I like to use cookbooks, have a bunch of specialty, old, and hard to find cookbooks... and we get power outages out here so when that happens anything online ceases to be available to me till the power comes back up again, and that never happens with a hardcopy book.

    To our OP Sherry- perhaps use a combination of spaces for your books. Use the space between the windows and also space in your pantry if that's what you need to shelve your books. How you split them up would depend on your cooking and decor styles.

  • 5 years ago

    My living room is next to my kitchen. I keep most of my cookbooks in a bookcase that is in my living room. I recently purcased a Ninja Air Fryer ( that I love ) and get air fryer recipes on line.

  • 5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    My binder of collected recipes is priceless -- it's one of the things I'd grab in case of fire (that, and my Bible, passport, and birth certificate). Many of my recipes are old family recipes passed down from people who have long since departed this earth, along with ones that have become new traditional favorites over the years, recipes that I'm "known for" in my circle. Most of them I could probably re-create from memory if needed, but many I cannot. The cookbooks I would be fine ditching, but not that collected recipe binder.

    I could catalogue it digitally, but why bother? It's just so much simpler for me to just pull out the binder from the island and start cooking. {shrug}


    ETA: Many cookbooks are beautifully photographed and do make nice coffee table books, BTW.

  • 5 years ago

    In the small cabinet above my microwave and in a drawer. We tend to use recipes from online now.

  • 5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    I keep the few most used ones (okay, actually about 15) on a small shelf on the island. The others are in a cabinet in the dining room close by. I use pinterest a lot but my books are still important to me. I get that this is not the case for everyone.

    Jen, it hurts my feelings and makes me sad when you throw out an insult against a whole group of people (me included).

  • 5 years ago

    It…seems like some people are erroneously interpreting the post as ‘Do you like cookbooks?’

    Live and let live, folks!
    Sheesh.

    Anyway, We have a keeping room off the kitchen and my many, MANY pieces of clutter—I mean cookbooks—are in there in my built in cabinets.

    😉

  • 5 years ago

    I did whittle down my collection and I think I can fit a bookshelf by the pocket door. I wanted to keep and use the Dutch windows for a jelly cabinet but maybe a better solution is a bookshelf.

  • 5 years ago

    I have mine in a bookcase in a room that is open to the kitchen. I don’t have many, but I could not part with my tattered 1970 Joy of Cooking. My iPad gives me access to lots of other recipes.

    Sherry Brighton thanked shwshw
  • 5 years ago

    I put some book shelves on the ends of my island specifically to house my cookbooks.

  • 5 years ago

    I must be one of the few that keeps them in a kitchen cabinet. I do have four binders of recipes I've collected over the years that I keep on open shelves in the kitchen.

    At camp dinners are simple. I just have one Betty Crocker cookbook in the pantry and one conversational/decorative cookbook above the stove. "White trash cooking"

  • 5 years ago

    Mine are in the cabinet over the fridge.

    Sherry Brighton thanked cawaps
  • 5 years ago

    Mine are on top shelf in pantry

    Sherry Brighton thanked ptmatthews