I’ve partnered up with technology lifestyle expert Carley Knobloch, from Digitwirl, to bring you some fun yet informative videos on various products and services related to technology that will help you get organized and simplify your busy life.

Today’s Digitwirl:

I’m so happy Carley is reviewing a menu planning resource this week.  After hearing what Carley had to say about Ziplist, I’ve spent the last hour or so checking it out.  I love how simple it is to use and I was drooling over some of the yummy sounding recipes.  Plus did I mention it’s free?  What’s not to love about that!?!  My only concern is the functionality of the Ziplist Recipe Clipper, which is a nifty tool that allows you to add recipes from around the web to your Ziplist recipe box.  I found it didn’t work on some of the regular blogs I get recipes from however it does give you the option of  manually adding favorite recipes if you’d like to.  I can definitely see how the free app would be a huge time saver for busy families on the go.  Anyway have a watch of the video below and let me know what you think.  Is this a site and menu planning resource that you think would be helpful to you?

Notes from Carley:

Keeping track of recipes is a pain— they’re all over the place, yet never in the right place when it’s time to make dinner. And then, there’s the grocery list… which doesn’t do you much good when you head to the grocery store without it. Sure you could sift through all your cookbooks, or write “milk, eggs, bread” on your hand, but why, when there’s Ziplist?

Ziplist is a website and free app that is going to change the way you store recipes and shop for groceries. A total game-changer when it comes to simplifying mealtime. In a chicken rut? Well just pop onto Ziplist and peruse the hundreds of chicken recipes from some of the biggest names in food (Martha Stewart anyone?). With the click of one button the recipe is stored in a virtual recipe box, and with another click a grocery list of ingredients is instantly created for you. Ziplist is even kind enough to help you save money with coupons you can print before you go to the store. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg lettuce when it comes to Ziplist’s features— watch how Carley uses it to enhance her breasts. (That’s chicken, of course!)

Digitwirl is the weekly web show that offers simple solutions to modern day problems. In 3 minutes, Digitwirl brings busy women the very best time, money, and sanity-saving technology, and then teaches them how to use it, step-by-step. Digitwirl was created by technology lifestyle expert Carley Knobloch, who uses lots of technology to manage her busy life as mom of two and entrepreneur. Become a subscriber to get weekly show alerts and exclusive deals at Digitwirl.com, or follow Digitwirl on Twitter at @digitwirl.

Ziplist ~ Recipe Storage & Grocery Shopping Made Easy is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

I’ve been wanting to add a buffet of some kind to my dining room to store these things but I haven’t been able to find anything that wouldn’t break the budget.  Then the other day as I was strolling through Wal-Mart as I tend to do I found this awesome bookshelf on sale.  I loved it immediately and while it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind I knew I could make it work.  Especially at the price of $39.00, sweet!

(the glass canister holds the dog treats)

It even came with those two fabric bins you see, perfect for storing my tablecloths!  I really do love it.  In fact I love it so much I bought a second one to use as a TV stand in the basement.  The two bins work nicely for corralling all the Wii stuff that never seems to end.

Now that they’re in my dining room, I’d really like to replace the colorful striped magazine holders with something a little more classy but it’s tough to beat 99 cents :)  If I had more inclination or even more patience I’d just cover these myself with pretty scrapbook paper but nope they don’t bother me enough to do that…hahaha.

If you’d like to print off this FREE God is Great Prayer Wall Art for yourself, visit Simply Awesome Printables!

If and when I ever do get an actual buffet I can use this piece just about anywhere in the house.  It would make a great nightstand in my daughter’s room or in my office as a printer stand.  I don’t have room for it in my entryway but I wish I did because it would look great there to house hats and mitts and all the other stuff that needs a home as you walk in the door.

Oh and if you’re curious about my recipe binders check out how I organized them: Part One and Part Two.  As you’ll see I did a little purging when we moved :)

A Fun & Functional Bookshelf is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that nearly all the recipes that make their way into my life, come to me over the internet. I frequently visit recipe blogs. Readers and friends email me their favorite recipes. I even gather recipes shared on forums where I’m an active member.

All of this presents the challenge of organizing them. There are lots of ways to go about organizing online recipes. Some people like to use websites like delicious.com to bookmark their favorites. Others print the recipes and put them in a binder. I’m going to share my favorite way to organize digital recipes.

But before I get to that, I want to share the biggest help:

I am very selective about the recipes I store. I only keep recipes that I know I will want to cook. It doesn’t happen often, but if I make a recipe and don’t like it, I delete the recipe. No need to keep something I never want to make again. This keeps my recipe storage clutter-free and places value on each recipe chosen for my digital recipe box.

My tool of choice for recipe organization is Microsoft OneNote. (Disclaimer: Microsoft doesn’t know who I am, what I cook or what I write. I only share about their product because I like it.)

OneNote enables me to keep notebooks for endless topics. I have a personal notebook with a section for recipes. When I find a recipe I want to try I can either print the entire page to OneNote, so that it looks just like the website or do a simple copy/paste of just the recipe, which is what I prefer. With either method the original website link is also included so I know where the recipe came from.

After copying into my notebook, I write on the recipe in a different color font. I make notes about changes I want to make or when I’d like to try the dish. I also record how I actually cooked the recipe and how it turned out. I often make changes to recipes and I love that I can write directly on the page in OneNote, just like in a real cookbook.

There are two alternatives to OneNote. Both are free. Springpad and Evernote offer many options for keeping track of things you find online, including recipes. I have only played with these options briefly. Springpad does have a way for you to make notes directly on recipes you save. I couldn’t find a way to do that in Evernote, but it may be possible. Also, both of these services are accessible from your phone. That could be very handy while in the grocery store. It would be nice to check ingredients for a recipe I left at home.

That’s how I organize digital recipes. How do you organize yours?

Tiffany shares lots of recipes, menus and complete grocery lists on her website, Eat at Home, Everyday Food for Busy People. She’s always on the look out for a new recipe or dinner idea to fix for her husband and four kids.

Related Posts:

My own recipe organization:  Part One and Part Two

Delicious Tutorial

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How to Organize Recipes You Find Online is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Anyway all that got me thinking that I haven’t done an Ask the Freak episode in awhile so why not today.  This means I go through the stack of emails I’ve got going on and pick one of your questions to finally answer.

Since I’m just about four years into this blog I’ve got a bit of blog material to refer to now and often it gets buried and is hard to find.  So you’ll see that sometimes I’ll elaborate on the answer here and other times I’ll just point you in the right direction to where I previously posted about the topic.

Today’s question is this:

Question:

I have recently started following your site.  I LOVE IT!  Thanks for sharing all the great ideas.  I was wondering if you have an idea on how to organize recipes I have printed out, clipped out of magazines, etc.  I have a ton of recipes in paper that I would love to organize to make them better and easier to find.  I was wondering before I start to come up with ideas if you have any ideas already in hand that you could share with me.  I would greatly appreciate the help.

Answer:

This one I can definitely point to because this was a huge unresolved issue in my life last year and many of you will remember the journey I took to finally get my piles and clippings of recipes under control.  I’m still using the same system today which says a lot :)

My Recipe Organization ~ Part One and Part Two

You might also find helpful Organizing Recipes to Suit YOUR Needs

and another post I did called Organizing Recipes (I’m nothing if not original in my titles :)) where I discuss a variety of different recipe organization options.

There really are so many great ways to organize recipes, perhaps you can help my reader out by sharing your method?

Ask the Freak is back! is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Whew we made it!  I hope over this past month I’ve been able to get you thinking about your recipes and how to organize or re-organize them.  I hope you’ll join me here today to share your success story with us.  I’m excited to see what system works for you, what organizational tools you find helpful and even whether or not you were able to part with any cookbooks.  I can’t believe I even brought that up again after the last outcry.  Please don’t hurt me :)

I was very happy to give my own recipe binders a face lift and get all my loose recipes filed away.  Something I might not have bothered with without this challenge giving me the push I needed.  It feels good!

Please link up below to a post on your site that shows us both your before and after pictures and remember to use the direct link to your round-up post and not to your homepage.  That’s helpful for those of us who might not get a chance to take a peek at your post until later.  Also, as a courtesy, if you are going to participate please be kind and link back to this post within your post.

Those that link up before Sunday at 6:00 pm PST will be eligible to win a copy of the Early Spring 2009 Better Homes & Garden’s most excellent Storage Magazine.   The lucky winner will be selected randomly from the Mr. Linky list below.

I hope you hang in there with me next month as we move on to our pictures and keepsakes.  Yikes, I’m twitching a little bit already.

For more info on Org Junkie’s Monthly Round-Up and how to participate please visit here.

image courtesy of offshorewifeslife

Organizing Recipes Round-up! is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

So my laptop died, a fast and painless death.  I didn’t even have time to say goodbye.  The only thing I was really sad about losing though was my Favorites.  I hadn’t backed those up since last October yet this could very well be a blessing in disguise.  I had a lot of Favorites and now I’m starting with a fresh slate.  So although I’m sad about my recipes there are many more out there for me to find. 

The other casualty?  My organizing recipe links for today.  These are the five I could remember I had on my list which is pretty good considering my memory track record :)  Have a great weekend everyone.  Unfortunately I guess I’ll be purchasing a new laptop and I say unfortunately because I’ll be using money I had set aside for the BlogHer Conference in July :(  That’s the way it goes sometimes though but I’m not giving up hope yet because you never know what can happen between now and then.   Is anyone else planning on attending?

Enjoy the links and good luck with your recipe organization.  Just a reminder that the Round-Up Mr. Linky will go up next Friday, February 27th.  I’ll personally be sending to one lucky participant the newest copy of Storage magazine.  I love this magazine, it’s full of awesome tips for staying organized all year round.

Scrapbooking Your Recipes @ Scraps Of Mind

Recipe Binders @ Easy At Home

Ideas for Organizing Recipes @ TipNut

Recipe Organization @ Candy Hearts and Paper Flowers

How to Organize Your Clipped Recipes @ eHow

Link~Tastic – Recipe Edition! is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

When visiting my dear friend the other day she showed me her poor overworked recipe box or should I say what used to be a box since the lid was no longer able to close. You see it was full of tiny little scraps of paper with recipes written on them.

Let’s take a look at the before picture:

Whenever she finds a recipe she likes she clips it out or grabs whatever little piece of paper she has nearby and writes down the recipe and shoves it into the box. I of course immediately wanted to suggest my method of organizing recipe scraps….using the old kind of photo album pages with the plastic cover that lifts up. I envisioned all those little scraps of paper all perfectly lined up in rows and each one in clear view. Yet before I even had a chance to say anything my dear friend suggested a method that she thought would work for her.

Her idea was to use the plastic page protector pockets…you know the ones designed to put an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper into and that have the three holes punched on the sides to place in a binder. She then wanted to put labels on each “pocket”…one for each catergory….then sort all her recipe scraps into these catergories, place them into the appropriate pocket and then put all the pages into a binder.

As soon as she said it I saw the error of my ways….we weren’t organizing these recipes for me…we were organizing them for her and this system is so brilliant for her for a number of reasons. First she didn’t have to spend too much time putting the system together. It took all of about a half hour to sort out the recipes and print off some labels. She still saves time looking for her recipes because now she has all her recipes sorted into catergories and she only has to grab the one pocket she needs. Finally it will be easy for her to maintain and that is key for her. As she clips new recipes she just pulls out her binder and drops them into the applicable pocket. No more stuffing them into that tiny little recipe box.

Yay…mission accomplished!

Organizing for your personality is definitely the way to go!

This post was orginally published October 6, 2006

Organizing recipe clippings to suit YOUR needs is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

So once again here are my binders before:

And here are my binders after.  I managed to consolidate three binders into two.  Sorry about the dark pictures.

 (and yes I did them exactly the same.  My creativity only goes so far :) )

I did up new tab dividers inside as well. 

I purchased a set of 12 mini tabs and used my Dymo Labeler in tiny mode to print up the labels.  It also has the ability to do two lines which helped out a lot.  You can read my review of this labeler here. 

I got my backlog purged down and filed away and boy does it feel good to have it done!  I even found some old recipes I haven’t made in awhile so I’m definitely looking forward to putting those on the menu plan again sometime soon :)

How are you making out with this month’s challenge?

My Recipe Organization ~ Part Two is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

I’ve used Delicious a bit here and there but not enough to explain to anyone else how to do it.  Yet, since February is recipe month, I definitely thought it was something we should talk about.  So I twittered Keri and begged asked her if she would please write a tutorial explaining how it all works.  She was so kind to do this and she even used screen shots, how cool is that!  Thank you so much Keri!

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Anyone have a messy mountain of recipes ripped out of magazines or printed off websites? Can you find the exact recipe you’re looking for in that pile, or quickly skim through all your soup or chicken recipes?

Here’s a handy way to make your personal cookbook paperless. I used delicious to create a customized, searchable online cookbook and eliminate that pile of paper. Delicious is a social bookmarking tool that stores your favorite sites online. You can see my online cookbook, and I’m going to show you how to set one up for yourself.

If you don’t already have a delicious account, you’ll need to register for one first. It’s also very helpful to have a delicious bookmark tool installed in your browser. Once that’s done, follow these steps to get started on a paperless cookbook.

Creating Your Delicious Cookbook

1. Log into your delicious account. Click on the gray Bookmarks square at the top of the page. Look in the upper right corner and find the blue shaded box under the search bar. Click on the link that says ‘Tag Options’ and then click on the link that says ‘Manage tag bundles’.



2. Click the green ‘Create’ button.



3. Name your cookbook whatever you want in box number one, then type as many recipe keywords as you can think of in box number two.
   • Enter anything you would want to search by, including ingredients (chocolate, fish), cuisines (Mexican, Asian), meals (dinner, breakfast), or other possibilities you use (meatless, slowcooker).
   • Do not use commas; separate each keyword with a space only.
   • If you have keywords you want to use that are more than one word, just smoosh the words together (teaparty).
   • Once you have entered all the tags you can think of, click the green ‘Save’ button.

Adding Recipes to Your Cookbook

1. Now that you have a system set up to organize your recipe bookmarks, let’s start adding recipes to your cookbook. Go to an online recipe you want to add to your online cookbook. Click your ‘bookmark on delicious’ button. (This will vary by the browser you are using, but should have been explained when you installed the browser tools in the first step.)
2. The title of the webpage will be included (you can change this if you want to remember it by something else) and there is a line for tags. Enter as many of your tags as you think you might want to search for this recipe by. As you do this more often, your tags will appear below the ‘Tags’ line under ‘Recommended Tags’ and all you have to do is click on the ones you want to add. Click ‘Save’ when you are done.



3. If you go to your delicious page, your new recipe bookmark will appear under your cookbook heading. Clicking on any of your tags will show you all the recipes you have added under that tag, making it easy to look up soup or cookie recipes.

Adding New Keywords to Your Cookbook

There is one other thing you need to know. Eventually you will tag a recipe with a keyword that’s not included in your tag bundle because you didn’t think of it when you first set this up. If this happens you’ll see those tags listed at the bottom under ‘Unbundled Tags’. To make sure any recipes you tag with the new keyword are included in your cookbook, you need to go back and add them to the tag bundle.

When this happens, all you have to do is go back to step one, but rather than creating a new bundle, click ‘Edit’ next to your cookbook. Add the unbundled tags that you want in your cookbook group and the recipes will automatically be moved into your online cookbook folders.

One More Thing

You can add other delicious users to your network so they can see your bookmarks and see the great recipes you’ve discovered as well. To do this, click on the gray People square at the top of the page and then look for the blue shaded box in the upper right.

Click on ‘Add a user to Network’. Enter the delicious username you want to add and then click ‘Add’. They will then appear under your Network and by clicking on their username you can see all of their bookmarks.

Leave a comment and let us know your delicious username so we can can add you to our networks and see your new cookbooks.

Using Delicious for organizing recipes ~ a tutorial is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

a)  can I find the recipes I need  and   b) can I find them in less than 2 minutes

And the answer to that, despite my lack of filing, is yes.   So I’m feeling pretty confident in my system, I just need to commit to filing the printed recipes on a more regular basis.

It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought.  I counted 129 pages that needed to be filed into my binders.

I need to weed through these though and really narrow it down to the ones I think I will honestly make again because only the favorites get put into my binders.  Once I’ve done that I can three hole punch them and file them in.

I currently have three binders:

1)  Gluten/Dairy/Egg Free Recipes

2)  Main Dishes (beef/chicken/pork/etc)/Salads/Dips/Soups/Appetizers/Drinks

3)  Pies/Cakes/Muffins/Cookies

In an effort to pretty up my binders and inspire my filing efforts I have purchased two new 2″ white binders and will consolidate three binders into two.  Most of the allergy friendly recipes in the big brown binder I no longer refer to.  As I’ve gotten more experienced with dealing with food allergies I am now, in most cases, able to just adjust whatever recipe I am using for the rest of the family.  Many of these recipes were printed at the start of my food allergy journey but require too many strange ingredients that I can’t even get in my small town.

I have a cookbook shelf in my office.  It’s the middle one.

(the blue blobs are just me covering up my kid’s names)

My cookbooks are on the left and my beloved cookbook magazines are divided in the seven magazine holders.  They are organized by type (Light & Tasty, Taste of Home and Healthy Cooking) and then in chronological order by year and month.  As you can see my shelf is full so I’ve actually been exhibiting great restraint in not purchasing anymore.  Not an easy feat though let me tell you.  Believe me I totally get the cookbook obsession so many of you talked about, only my addiction is with the magazines :)

I use a recipe journal as my index to keep track off all my favorite recipes that come from these magazines.  Nothing fancy, I simply write into it the recipe name, the magazine it came from along with the month and year.  This works amazingly well for me.

Finally since I’m talking about my recipe systems, I can’t forget to mention that I also have a system for categorizing the recipes that I find on the internet.  I created a recipes folder in my favorites and then created sub directories using similar categories as I use in my binders.  They are:

Allergy Friendly

Appetizers

Beef

Breads/Muffins

Breakfast

Chicken

Desserts (sub: Cookies)

Drinks

Meatless

Pizza

Pork

Potatoes

Salads

Soup

Vegetables

Using these categories makes menu planning very easy for me as recipes are filed the way I menu plan.  When I menu plan I first designate a type of meat to a certain day and then choose my recipes based on that.  So if I know I’m having pork on Wednesday I can quickly go to the pork sections in either my binder, my favorites or my online index in order to select a recipe to try.

Here are the links to my previous recipe posts for further ideas.

Organizing Recipes

A different take on a recipe binder

And remember there are many ways to organize and categorize recipes and no one method is right or wrong as long as it works for you.  Also I highly recommend keeping your eye on the comments of the various recipe posts I’ve done as many ladies are sharing the methods that work for them.  Please feel free to share here as well.

I’m off to do some hole punching now :)

See Part Two here

My Recipe Organization ~ Part One is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie