Works For Me: Recipes

This month Org Junkie challenged blog readers to a recipe round-up. Throughout the month she featured different suggestions for getting the recipe collection under control. This was a challenge worthy of my time, so I dug in. I wish however that I would have taken a little time to take the "before" pictures.

The problem:
~MANY loose recipes laying on the shelves
~Several pieces of typed paper recipes stuck in books
~Magazine clippings with recipe ideas & project ideas
~A few favorite recipes that are used repeatedly (maybe just because they are easiest to find)
~Lack of side dish inspiration for our favorite main dishes
~A growing collection of yummy soup recipes collected from Soup-er Saturdays
~New favorite recipes trapped in my computer
~Sticky prints on many recipes left from cook's fingers

Here is "What Works for Me"~

1. Meal Plan Albums

I organized our favorite recipes into plastic 4x6 picture albums. These are the recipes we use most often. Notice the blue writing on the pages. Using a wipe off marker I made notes about which side dish recipes work best with each recipe and where to find those recipes.

2. Recipe Binder

The recipes already printed & cut from magazines are now sorted by meal course in this binder. Each recipe is in it's own plastic page protector for quick wipe offs during cooking accidents. I also printed my online recipes and added them to this binder.

3. Tips & Activities

Stuck in with my recipe collection were the many magazine activity ideas I have been saving to try with the kids. Those that were too large for notecards are now safely stored in their own page protectors in the "Tips" binder

4. Activity Notecards

The suggestions that were small enough to be filed have been glued to 3x5 notecards. The picture of each ideas is on the front of the card and the instructions are on the back. These are sorted into very general catagories: games, learning activities, science experiments, kids crafts, adult crafts, and home-making tips.

It feels good to have control over my recipe collection again...

...at least until the next time I cook - smiles!!