Recipe Binders

As part of my summer organizing, I knew I had to get my recipes back under control. They were such a mess! I’ve had a great system for about 10 years, but it was time to clean it back up. I’m not talking so much about cookbooks today although I did straighten them and take out a couple to donate. Instead, I’ll be talking about those loose recipes you tear out of a magazine, print off Pinterest, or have on a recipe card.

When we moved to this house 11 years ago, I came with all my cookbooks and a big basket of those loose recipes. There were so many that anytime I wanted to use a particular one, I had to thumb through the entire stack. This hadn’t been a problem when I first started the basket, but by this time the stack was so deep that it took forever to find the recipe I had in mind.

So, I started storing them in binders and had a binder for each category of food. It has worked so well but for the last year I haven’t been filing my recipes back in their binders after I use them (so I had another stack!) and I’ve noticed that the binders and dividers were getting really old and beat up.

Here’s the before….

I promise I did not pose the cat there, haha! As soon as I take out that basket that sits there, she likes to jump up and claim the space. That girl loves a cozy spot. But, as you can see, the binders were looking pretty bad.

So, here’s the after…

I bought 5 new binders and gave them fresh scrapbook papers that make me smile because it’s good to enjoy pretty things in your workspace! My binders contain the following categories: Apps/Soup/Misc, Salad/Side, Main Dish, Dessert, and Bread/Breakfast/Beverage. I wrote “Main Course” on one but realized that “Main Dish” is probably better, so I’ll go back and change that later.

I’ll show you inside one for an example and we’ll use the “Dessert” binder since everyone loves dessert most, right! I told my daughter that I used my favorite paper for the dessert binder since dessert is my favorite category and she totally agreed with my reasoning as I’m sure all of you ladies do as well. Ok, so looking inside, there are dividers between each category of dessert.

After each divider is a clear sleeve that holds the recipes that are on cards and small pieces of paper.

A quick story: You might be able to see one in there called “Breezie’s Rum Cake”. Breezie was the best friend of our Mama Gay and now both ladies have gone on to heaven. My sister-in-law wrote out that recipe for me probably 25+ years ago when Breezie was well and lively and hosting gatherings, and that was her signature cake! It then became my sister-in-law’s signature cake (in addition to her caramel cake), and she even made it for my nephew’s groom cake per his request. It’s one of those legacy cakes!

Ok, so back to the binders. After the first sleeve that holds the small recipes, I have all my full-page recipes from magazines and printed off the internet. I put them in plastic sleeves as well to keep them from tearing. Above is one printed from a website (my favorite lemon cake) and below is one from a magazine (my husband’s favorite coconut cake).

An added benefit to having them in plastic sleeves is that I can tape it on the cabinet next to the stove or mixer or wherever I’m working for easy viewing. I also like that I can use a dry-erase marker to mark off ingredients at I put them in the bowl to keep up with where I am. If I tweak a recipe then I’ll take it out of the sleeve and make a note of the changes before returning it to the binder.

I also have a recipe box that I keep our most frequently used recipe cards for quick reference.

After going through all these recipes and rediscovering old ones we used to enjoy and some I never even tried, I feel more inspired to cook! And I found so many cute kid recipes of my children’s. So, in another post, I’ll share those and some sweet stories of my kids in the kitchen!