Organizing My Recipe Cabinet

It should not be a shock to anyone that stops by my blog that I love to cook.  I use many exclamation marks and over the top words such as scrumptious, yummy, delicious, irresistible, etc when the topic of food is at hand. With this love of recipes comes a bit of a quirk.  I want to try just about e-v-e-r-y recipe that  I s-e-e.  It creates an interesting problem since I find about five recipes a day that I want to try.  You see, the math doesn’t work in my favor.  I will die with a stack of recipes left to try.  Cold, hard, truth.

My recipe cabinet was getting to be a slight mess, so I came up with a plan.

Before The Makeover

Keep in mind, this is just my recipes books, the recipes I have printed off and the magazine clippings I have saved.  This does not include my ever growing bookmark page of recipes that I have saved to my computer.

I found a magazine holder and a small file box at Target, both were $3. I stacked all of my cooking magazines in the magazine holder. 

Then, I took my collection of recipes that I haven’t tried yet and I sorted them into categories, Pasta, Veggies, Bread, Entrees, Beverages, Desserts, etc.  I put the different categories into basic manila folders and placed them in the file box.  This way when I am looking for some inspiration in a certain area I can grab the folder and see what I have new to try. 

My system is this: Once I try a new recipe I either save it by typing it up into my word document recipe book or I rid my home of it by throwing it away.  Thus the "To Type" file you see in my file box.  This means the  recipe made the cut.  Every once in a while, I print off my collection of recipes and update the recipe binder that I keep in my kitchen.

After The Makeover

The lighting in my kitchen is terrible so please give me grace with these pictures. This organizing project was not glamorous, but it was fast and it works.

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