Organizing Your Recipe Collection: Categories, Binders and More

Recipes can come from many different sources. You can find recipes online, in magazines, on food labels and from family and friends. Because of this, recipes can come in various forms and sizes. You have a wonderful chicken recipe, which you clipped from a magazine and a folded-up piece of paper with Aunt Gertrude's famous flaky biscuit recipe. But how do you store them in an organized fashion? You have many options when it comes to organizing these types of recipes, and it doesn't have to be difficult.

First: Decide on the different categories you want to use to organize your recipes. The more detailed you are, the easier it will be to find a certain recipe. You can break them down by type, season, and/or ingredients. For example:

Spring/Summer Main Dish Recipes
Spring/Summer Beverage Recipes
Spring/Summer Side Dishes
Spring/Summer Grilling Recipes
Spring/Summer Vegetable Dishes

You can also create a separate category titled Family Favorites. These are the recipes that you cook most often that your family loves. For recipes that you haven't tried yet you will want to create a To Try category. These recipes should not be included with the other recipes until they have been tasted first.

Second: You want to choose which storage option works best for you. You have many different options when it comes to storing your recipes. You can store them as files on your computer, in binders, accordion files, or recipe boxes. Deciding on which container to use is beneficial to how you will format your recipes. For example, if you will be storing your recipes in binders you will want to have your recipes on 8x11.5 sheets of paper. For a small recipe box you will need index cards instead.