Organizing recipe clippings to suit YOUR needs

Posted by Laura on February 18, 2009 · 25 Comments

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

Filed under Recipe Organization · Tagged with recipe clippings, Recipe Organization

Organizing Recipes

Posted by Laura on September 30, 2008 · 45 Comments

Recipes are everywhere and so many look so good that we bookmark, we rip, we email, we save, we print and we write in order to collect and keep them organized in some sort of orderly fashion. Ideally we’d like to be able to find them again when we need to without having to waste too much time searching for them. I love trying new recipes and often will have two or three new recipes on the menu plan to try each week. The problem is of course finding the best method to track not only new recipes to try but our tried and true favorites as well.

Before I share how I organize my recipes though let’s discuss some of the various methods available to us.

Recipe box:

Recipe boxes work well for recipes on index cards but don’t work so well for holding magazine clippings or 8.5×11 sheets of paper. Most recipe boxes aren’t near big enough either.

Computer:

There are a number of different ways to mange recipes on your computer:

1. Type your recipes into a Word document

2. Bookmark them into your Favorites using a specific recipe folder and then further organized into various sub-folders for the different food categories

3. Online using a bookmarking site such a Delicious. Elise from Simply Recipes has an excellent tutorial on how to do this.

4. Online using recipe software such as Big Oven or Cookbook Wizard

5. Create your own recipe book with an online service such as Tastebook

Photo album/3 ring binder:

Using the old style peel and stick photo albums or a 3 ring binder with page protectors are great ways to contain both regular size sheets of paper as well as smaller clippings and scrap pieces of paper. Adding some simple tab dividers allow you to sort your recipe pages into specific food categories.

photo courtesy of dearbarbie

It’s important to remember that no one method will work the same for everyone. We are all unique in our priorities as well as with our likes and dislikes. That is totally A-okay. Regardless of whichever method you choose I think it’s important to take into consideration your personality and what’s important to you. I discussed this in more detail here.

For me I needed a system that included a place to keep the recipes that my family loves and another location for recipes we want to try. I also know that I don’t enjoy writing out recipes by hand or typing them out on the computer so any kind of system that requires me to do that just wouldn’t work for me. I have comfortably settled on a combination of systems that meet my needs. Due to Menu Plan Monday and wanting to be able to link to the recipes I post I now find most of my recipes online. I created a Recipe folder in my Bookmarks with multiple sub-folders (ie: chicken, pork, beef, meatless, salads, desserts, etc) that make it very convenient for me to add recipe links to as I find them online. Recipes that we enjoy and I know I will make again get printed out and put into a three ring binder that has been divided with the same category tabs. I only have one binder so once that is full I have to go through the purging process before I can add anymore. For recipes found offline I use my folder method until I’ve had a chance to try them out.

As many of you know I also adore the Taste of Home publications and have quite the collection of magazines that I can’t bear to tear apart. I want to keep them intact so I have found that a recipe journal works well for tracking these recipes. I rarely use cookbooks any more but this method would work well for tracking your favorite cookbook recipes as well.

In addition I’ve also been finding it extremely helpful having a Family Favorites Index on my site. To keep consistency I’ve got the recipes listed there organized into the same categories as I use in the other systems I have going on. This definitely makes it very easy to find what I’m looking for.

To keep my bookmarks on my computer under control and from getting out of hand once they’ve been tried they get added to my index and/or printed out and then deleted.

As you can see the possibilities are endless really and I know I’ve given you a lot to think about but let me know if I’ve missed something and/or which method works best for you.