I’ve been on a quest to find the best recipes since I first learned to cook. When I was younger I was sure all those recipes were my mom’s or grandmas. I remember heading off to college with a small recipe binder holding those cherished recipes. In fact I still have that little recipe binder…
At collage I was exposed to others cooking and found new recipes I loved. In they went to my little binder. Then food blogs and pinterest become popular and I found so many more yummy recipes! My little binder exploded and became this mess of recipes.
The organization is lacking. It takes a long time to find the recipe I want. If I find the correct recipe, I have to battle the food stains that cover them. Anyone else have the same problem? I decided to end this problem and revamp my recipe organization. I created a plan for this HUGE project and decide to share this with you in a two part blog series. I hope you will follow along and be inspired to work on your own growing pile of growing recipes.
The first part of the series I want to discuss is preparation and how to accomplish it in five steps. Starting this project I thought I would breeze through this step. I later learned this was going to be the most time consuming part of the project. I tell you this for two reasons…first so you don’t get discouraged and second so you can be warned that this project can take more time than expected. Let’s get started on this project!
- Coral all recipes into one spot – My recipes were floating around in multiple spots, including the internet. I brought everything together. I did print off some of the recipes from the internet that I’m constantly referring to.
- Throw away unused recipes – Go through each and every recipe you have and decide whether to keep it or throw it. This was a hard step. I really had to evaluate if a recipe was one my family and I enjoyed or not. The recipes that I was undecided about I asked input from my family. I was surprised how many recipes I actually threw away in this process.
- Separate according to categories – A good recipe binder has well defined categories, that allows for ease of finding recipes quickly. These categories can be different for each individual or family. Some people prefer breakfast, lunch, and dinner categories. Others prefer appetizers, main courses, desserts. Just find a category system that makes sense to you, then divide your recipes into piles of each category.
- Determine categories – As I mentioned above, this project takes time. Unless you want your recipes floating all around again you need to find a way to secure your piles. I chose to label my piles, binder clip each pile together and place all piles on my desk in one HUGE stack. They stay there while I work on converting them to recipe cards. The piles allow me to pull a recipe for cooking, and be able to know exactly where that recipe needs to go back to.
- Select supplies for binder – Of course this is the fun part of the whole process! You get to start browsing TLP store for supplies that will work for your binder. My next post will go into more detail about my binder, supplies, and set up I chose. For now I will let you know that I selected the From Scratch Bundle by Little Butterfly Wings and Amber LaBau Designs. This bundle matched the colors I had in mind for my project perfectly.
I hope you found this informational and motivating to start your own recipe binder. Watch out for an update on my recipe binder next month!
Leave a Reply