Over the years I’ve collected a lot of recipes from magazines, websites and Pinterest. I tried just about every way to organize them and nothing seemed to work. I’m talking binders, folders, organized by meal type, etc. Finally, I figured a way that doesn’t take up much space or time that I’ve been using for the past few years.
This post contains affiliate links. For more information please see my disclosures here.
I started using an index card box
to organize my recipes. It holds 3 x 5 index cards
and fits perfectly in my kitchen cabinet. I love that I don’t have a million pieces of paper or a big binder to find space for. When I need a recipe I simply open my kitchen cabinet and take out this little box.
I added a simple sticker to the front to label it my recipe box and to make it a little less boring. I know, I’m SO creative! Ha!
On the inside I added alphabetical index card dividers
. If you want to spice it up (no pun intended) with a little color these
are cute, too. Or, if you want to organize your recipes by type instead of alphabetically check these
out.
About once a month or once every few months (depending on how many new recipes I’ve collected) I print them out on 3 x 5 index cards. I like to use the unruled index cards because it looks cleaner and I don’t need the lines for writing. Then I simply place them under the correct letter of the alphabet. If you write out your recipes I suggest using ruled index cards
.
You can see in the picture above there are recipes piled in before “A”. These are recipes I haven’t tried yet. Once I try them, they will be filed under the correct letter (if I like it) or thrown out (if I don’t like it).
The alphabet dividers usually have an “Mc” tab which I decided not to use. Any recipes that start with “M” will be filed under “M”. I re-purposed the “Mc” divider for crock pot recipes and placed it after “XYZ”. How easy is that?
