For many people, the world of Pinterest has changed the way they keep recipes. In a time when so much is digital, it's easy to keep track of things on your computer. However, there are still plenty of folks who prefer written or tangible recipes to digital. If you have piles of recipes torn out of magazines, recipes you have printed out from online, or hand written recipes that have been passed down to you, it can be hard to manage them all in a way that is user friendly. We've made recipe notebooks for several clients and we would love to share our process with you.
Items needed:
- hard copies of recipes
- scissors
- page protectors
- notebook (or notebooks)
- tab dividers
- label maker or sharpie
1. Sort your recipes into manageable categories. If you don't have a ton of recipes it might make sense to use categories like Appetizers, Entree's, Sides, Desserts, Drinks etc. If you've got a really large amount of recipes it might make sense to further separate into more defined categories like Entree's: Chicken, Entree's: Beef, Sides:Salads, Sides:grains etc. Once you are sorted, throw out duplicates or recipes that no longer look appealing to you. If you like to print recipes from your computer, chances are, you've printed multiple copies.
2. Take stock-- if you've got a large collection of recipes you may want a separate notebook for each broad category-- a whole notebook for desserts, a whole notebook for salads etc.
3. Go through and put each recipe in a page protector-- If your recipe is one sided, choose one to put back to back with another one so that each page protector has 2 recipe's represented. Page protectors are really helpful in keeping your recipe intact. When you are cooking from a recipe, inevitably, you spill something on the paper-- the page protector makes it easy to wipe off spills and protects the paper from getting wet or torn.
4. Print labels for the tab dividers with each category name (or if you prefer to hand letter- use a sharpie to label each tab)
5. Put pages and dividers into notebook. If you have a lot of recipes it may be helpful to alphabetize the recipes in each category. You can also create an index if you want to go the extra mile.
Have a different idea for organizing recipes? We'd love to hear!
