RECIPE ORGANIZATION

My mom and I have been talking about recipe organization for the past couple days. We talked about wanting to organize each of our own hodge podge piles of recipes one day, but just weren't 100% sure how to go about doing just that. Binders? Recipe Boxes? Expandable Folder Systems? I looked at a few ideas on pinterest to help jump start my creative juices and ended up running across a cute and simple idea that caught my mom's attention. In this case it was a cute cardboard magazine holder turned on it's side with left and middle tabbed manilla folders labeled with food categories and placed inside the box. The pinterest idea was to make it a place to put recipes you've collected over the years that you've been wanting to try. I would assume if the recipes made the cut, then they would proceed to further organization, otherwise they'd have to take a hike. So, since my kiddos and I are visiting my parents this week, we decided to go through my mom's stack of miscellaneous recipes that have been patiently waiting to be organized. So, while she started the process of sorting the recipes into categories, I dressed up the manilla folders tabs with red electrical tape (to match a cardboard magazine holder she already had) and used a sharpie to label the categories she wanted her recipes in. The magazine holder had a couple red stripes and a grid pattern down part of it. The red labels on the folders really popped and coordinated well with the box. I really like how it turned out! Mom was even able to weed out a good handful of recipes that were duplicated or didn't look quite as fascinating anymore. I think she got about half way through her stack, and then decided to call it a night. But hopefully, we'll be able to finish the rest of the stack tomorrow night! Eventually she wants to retype all the keeper recipes and print them out to be placed in a binder. I have been toying around with the idea of a binder as well, but have NOT been able to figure out the best way to organize it to my taste and needs. I think I'm slowly whittling down how I am going to make my binder. More details to come one day ...