The internet is a treasure trove of amazing recipes. Don’t get me wrong, I positively adore my collection of cookbooks and hand written recipe cards from friends and family, but the internet is where it’s at when it comes to finding new things to cook.

The variety.

The videos.

The pictures.

The ability to ask the masses at large a question when you have no idea what you’re doing. Seriously, how did anyone learn to cook anything new before the creation of the internet? I asked my 95-year-old Nana that question the other day and she laughed.

Laughed!

“Oh Carol Anne,” she said, “when was the last time you saw me cook anything new?” Point taken Nana, point taken. You keep on making those chocolate chip cookies.

Meanwhile, the rest of us “digital immigrants” and “digital natives” and soon just “digitals” are presented with a unique problem – storing potentially massive amounts of recipes we hope to reference at a later date.

Entire applications have been built to serve this function. If you’re reading this post then I bet you’ve tried some of them. And I bet you weren’t impressed.

Me either.

Many of the recipe saving apps out there today are just too… busy. They have too many buttons, too many ingredient checkboxes, too many pictures. Too many features I just don’t care about like printing shopping lists and rating recipes. (I save recipes because I think they’re awesome, I don’t need to rate them anymore than that.)

If you’re in love with your recipe app I’d love to hear which one you use and why you recommend it. If you haven’t found that special app yet, keep reading.

I don’t know about you but I deplore clutter. Physical clutter, digital clutter, emotional clutter, you name it. Clutter creates stress and stress isn’t fun for anyone. Tasked with saving bucket loads of recipes while not wanting to further clutter my digital life, I turned to the obvious solution.

The one app that 90% of 15-64 year olds in the U.S. already use regularly.

Email.

Wait, what?

That’s right, I use my email to save recipes. I told you it was embarrassingly simple. I created an inbox folder, named it “Food,” and email myself links to recipes that I love with the name of the recipe as the subject line. It’s proven to be an incredibly fast and convenient way to save recipes. And an exceptionally easy way to share them with other people because you know, I just email them.

No new usernames, no new passwords, no recipe ratings or checkboxes or weird pagination.

Just a simple list of links to all the recipes I love in email form.

Here’s a picture of my personal Food folder. (Yes, food bloggers like to cook using recipes too.)

If you’re like my husband you’re probably thinking this method is great and all except for the times when websites are discontinued or links are moved. To which I respond you most certainly have a point HOWEVER I have yet to find a link in my personal Food folder that no longer works (and I’ve been doing this for a loooong time). Good recipes tend to stick around.

That being said, if you’re genuinely concerned a link will go defunct then you can always take a screenshot of the recipe and include it in the email you send yourself. It’s an extra step which takes away from the simplicity of this recipe saving technique but if you’re that worried then it’s probably worth it.

What are you waiting for? Go try this recipe saving method for yourself! Here are the instructions:

1. Using your email (because everyone has an email address these days, even my 95-year-old grandmother) create a folder and name it “Food.”

2. Anytime you find a recipe you love, send the link to yourself via email with the name of the recipe or something you’ll remember as the subject line.

3. Move it to your Food folder.

Voila! You now have an easily accessible, personally curated online recipe directory. All your favorite recipes are just a quick inbox search away. Enjoy!

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