How I Organize my Found Recipes

I really like to cook. I love trying new recipes. It is so fun to try something new and taste/evaluate it. Over the years, I have accumulated quite a few recipes from here, there and everywhere. I have had subscriptions to various magazines and so and so forth. My recipe file, it overfloweth!

A few years ago, I found this fantastic accordion file style organizer at Sur La Table. I knew the instant I saw it, it was just what I had been looking for to organize my recipes. I had seen notebook style folders for this same purpose, but they just seems so messy and disorganized to me. So, as I said, as soon as I saw this one, I knew it was coming home with me!

Hey and guess what, I just check on Amazon…they still sell this recipe organizer!! Yippee and happy day for you if you like this idea. It doesn’t have the bow anymore, but probably that would be easier (even if it isn’t as cute). You can click the picture to the right or this link to go look at it on Amazon: Accordion Recipe File

I have lived happily with my recipe organizer for probably 4 years now. Recently, I found myself a little frustrated with my lovely organizer. I have so many recipes that it was become a bit frustrating to find what I wanted.

I was inspired to change my system. I really get excited to try new recipes. I really want to start trying to cook 1 new recipe per week.

The problem is that my beautiful organizer is so full of both tried and true recipes and new recipes it was become a challenge to find what I was looking for.

I decided to use the $1 accorian file I had purchased for the girls to keep their construction paper in when I re-organized our craft area. (Don’t worry, they got a new cute Hello Kitty file that was on clearance at Target…which they are in love with!)

I went through all my recipes. I made my pretty accorion file for my tried and true recipes. That will be so nice and so easy to find things I know everyone will eat. I also got rid of recipes that were so/so and that I highly doubt we will make again.

You could easily make your own accorion style organizer. You would just need to purchase an accordion style organizer with 8 sections. My organizer has the following categories, which work well for me:

• Appetizers/Beverages
• Eggs/Poultry
• Pasta/Grains
• Desserts/Cakes
• Soups/Saladas
• Seafood/Meats
• Vegetalbes/Legumes
• Breads/Cookies

I used the $1 accordion file for all those collected recipes I haven’t gotten around to testing/using. The only ‘problem’ with my cheap accorion file is that it only has 5 sections. I decided to organize it in the following groups:

• Appetizers/Beverages/Misc.
• Breakfast
• Main Dishes
• Vegetables/Side Dishes
• Desserts

Look at all that yumminess in our future!

Now I look at both files and I get excited to cook. I really want to try to make 1 new recipe per week. Maybe I will even blog about it here…maybe that would get me to actually do it. I have been saying I wanted to start this since the beginning of the year…well now I am organized and ready to implement. I just need to get in there and do it! 

UPDATE 4/11/2012: You can read about how this re-organization has been working for me. I wrote a new post about it: Update: How I Organize My Found Recipes.