Recipe Binder

I love using items that I already have on hand to make my life easier.  In our apartment, we have a ton of unused binders.  Does anyone need a few for school or some craft project?  Come see me...I'll hook you up.  ha!  I constantly tease Chris about the number of binders we have and I never thought I'd find a use for all of them.  Thankfully (due to pinterest and the blog iheartorganizing) I've found plenty of uses over the past year and now you can find them all throughout our apartment.  Most recently, I have completed (for the moment) my family binder which makes finding things so much easier!  Today, I decided to remake my recipe binder because things needed to be added and fixed.

I started out with a handful of recipes (my husband is a picky eater) so it was always hard for me to find new things to eat.  I've slowly been expanding his palate and I think it's been going pretty well.  I've gotten good at sneaking healthier ingredients in our food and Chris is none the wiser (although, if he reads this blog I'm screwed).

Thanks to pinterest, I've been able to find great recipes that we can try and nine times out of ten we love the new recipe.  So, since I've been adding a lot of new food to our diet I figured it was time to expand my recipe binder.  The first thing I did was make categories and sub-categories:

1.  breakfast

2.  soups

3.  salads

4.  breads and muffins

5.  main dishes

(a) chicken

(b) beef

(c) pork

(d) steak

(e) vegetable

(f) pasta

6.  slow cooker

(a) chicken

(b) beef

(c) pork

(d) soup

7.  side dishes

8.  sweets

9.  drinks

Then I printed out a table of contents, used two 1 inch strips of colored paper to outline the sides (it needed some color!), and went on a search around the apartment for leftover dividers.  To be able to find the different types of poultry (in the main dishes and slow cooker categories) I took colored cardstock and placed those in-between them.

After my table of contents, I have two sections that precede the recipes:  

1.  Weekly Recipes

2.  Grocery Shopping List  

I love these two sections because it's so easy to get to the recipe I'm making that day, and it has all the ingredients I'll need for the week in one easy-to-get-to place.  I also made a family meal planning calendar last year and try to plan my meals out for the coming month.  That helps me to know exactly what I'll need when I go to the grocery store and I also know if I need certain bulk items during Costco trips.  This usually cuts down my trips to the grocery store significantly and I am all about saving time and money.

So, do you like to keep your recipes on index cards in a box or do you like the idea of a binder?  And as always, happy crafting!