I’ve seen it in every house I’ve ever organized and was even guilty of it myself. A rag-tag collection of recipes. Handwritten family recipes, pages I pulled out of magazines, and a computer full of downloaded links. It was disorganized and not easy to find what I wanted when I wanted it.
So what did I do? I grabbed my recipe box, recipe book, folder full of magazine pages, and booted up my laptop. I was about to create a 3-ring binder of organized recipes!
I will be the first to admit, I took my recipe organization project to the next level. I wanted it all typed in the same font and format, with photos to accompany every recipe. It definitely took a bit of time, and I did this over several months.
I first went through my recipe box and book full of handwritten recipes. Then I got down to typing. I transferred only the recipes I knew I would actually cook. I’m not a baker so it was easy to cut down on all the cookie and cake recipes. Here’s where I went a little crazy. Remember me saying I wanted photos with every recipe? Well, I didn’t have pictures for most of them. I ended up searching on food and recipe websites to find the best representation of what I knew my dishes were supposed to look like. Yep…I did that. LOL Now, I’m not a sentimental person, so keeping handwritten recipes was not important to me. But you may want to keep grandma’s chocolate chip cookie recipe in her handwriting. If that’s the case, you can laminate it or put it in a page protector sleeve. I put all of my printed pages in clear page protectors so I never have to worry about spills or splatters.
Next, I sorted through all the pages I had pulled out of magazines. This was pretty easy for me to get down to a manageable level. I’ll tell you this, when you decide to type everything, it makes editing the recipes you want to keep a lot easier. 😊 Plus, a lot of these recipes I could find on-line.
Finally, I needed to go through the hundreds of links I had downloaded over the years and stored in my “favorites” bar. I read through the recipes and was realistic with myself on what I was likely to give a try. The nice thing about the computer files is that I just had to copy and paste to create my new recipe pages. Plus, those links already had photos so no need to hunt for pics. In the end, this is what I created:
I don’t expect anyone to take recipe organization to this extreme. Trust me, I know I’m a dork. 😊 But the approach is pretty much the same. Sort your recipes by category: appetizers, vegetables, chicken, etc. Toss out any that you won’t cook and place your keepers in page protectors. If you have small recipe cards, you can tape them to a blank piece of copy paper so they don’t slide around. Add tabs to separate your sections and voila! You have an organized binder full of your family’s favorite recipes.
Happy cooking, everyone!
And, as always, if you have a space that needs a bit of SOS magic, give me a call!
