Recipe Organization

My recipe binder had gotten out of control recently. I was in the terrible habit of just shoving pages torn from magazines into the binder, with no thought given to categories or anything else. I also had a lot of recipes that seemed like a good idea but, let's be honest, they would never see the light of day. I'm still pretty amateur in the kitchen and some of those recipes were too ambitious.

I was pretty ruthless with what stayed and what was tossed in the recycle bin. If the recipe called for ingredients I knew I never have or would be difficult to find, it got tossed. If the recipe had terms I didn't understand, it was also tossed. I even had duplicate recipes; same dish, just with slight variations.

I don't have any good before pics but here's a look inside!

Binder is from Target.

I use dividers with pockets to break my recipe binder into categories such as Breakfast, Appetizers, Dinner, and Dessert. Recipes that I want to try go into the pocket of the corresponding section. Tried and true recipes go into clear plastic sheets, which keep them protected from spills. Those happen. A lot.

Pocket = Stuff to try. Sheet protectors = Crowd pleasers to make again.

Since some recipes don't take up an entire page, I cut and tape them together on a sheet of plain paper. This way, I have fewer sheets taking up space in the binder. Those clear covers make for a phat fat binder.

Four different recipes but only one sheet!

I divided my dinner section into sub-categories. This makes menu planning easy because I can keep all of my chicken recipes together, for when we want chicken. I simply attached some blank adhesive file labels to the bottom of some dividers.

And that's that! Easy peasy!

Do you have an easy method for keeping your recipes organized? Does it ever get out of control anyway?