Feed Your Family Week 5: Organizing Your Recipes

There is no right or wrong way to store or organize your recipes.  I just found myself so frustrated trying to find a recipe I remember seeing.  Was it in my recipe box with index cards?  Was it in the March issue of Rachael Ray?  Was it in my pampered chef cook book?  Talk about frustrating.  I created this system that works great for me!  It might work for you, it might not, but regardless this post may give you some pointers for figuring out a system that works for you!

BEHOLD THE RECIPE BINDER

I have consolidated almost all of my recipes into one book!  I still have about 4 recipe books I couldn't bring myself to get rid of, but this is my main "hub" when it comes to menu planning.

I have lovely dividers that are full on plastic because there is no way paper ones would be able to survive all the wear and tear, and I broke my recipes into categories that work for me.  Everyone is different in how they like their sections separated but here are my tabs.

Eggs/Breakfast

Soups

Vegetables/Salads

Starters/Sides

Burgers/Sandwiches

Poultry

Meat (beef, pork mostly)

Pastas/Pizza

Fish/Shellfish

Dessert/Drink

I used photo book pages to hold all the recipe cards.  I had to punch my own holes because they didn't line up quite right, but they work perfect!  These are at the front of each section.

I have regular sleeve protectors for all the full sized pages.  These have pages ripped out of magazines and pages printed from the internet mostly, with the occasional handwritten recipe. 

So what did I do with all my cookbooks?? I took the time to look through them and if there was anything I knew I HAD TO KEEP, I wrote it down and put it in the notebook and then I donated them to the church yardsale.  

The binder has mostly recipes we have tried and like, or ones that I'm pretty sure we will like.  If there are any other ones that I need to try I stuff them in the front pocket.

I always look through these recipes first when planning my menu to see if I can implement them.  (my pile is kind of big right now... oops!)  

So there you have it, my way of organizing my recipes so I can easily find them.  What do you do to organize your recipes??