Kitchen

[happycat]

On 2/26/2014 brewhaha said:

In my brain. That's why I can't find them.

Ha!

[PunkinEater]

On 2/26/2014 happycat said:

On 2/26/2014 chickenbutt said:

The stuff I have that's not part of its own cookbook (like magazine pages, cards, stuff I've printed from online, or the recipes I've written and typed up), I have in a big binder.

I got some of those plastic sheets that you put the paper inside, to keep it pristine. If you have small pieces of paper you can situate more than one in there, plus you have two sides and can put them together with a piece of paper in the middle and just tape the small ones to the paper to keep them in one place.

I got some of those divider sheets and tabs (anywhere on the office supplies aisle) and categorized them.

A regular-sized three-ring binder (mine is 2" thick) will hold a LOT of two-sided pages. Plus there are pockets inside the front and back covers so I have little things in those or things I might use all the time.

I think this is a wonderful idea and may be my next project. My recipes are in a recipe box and not in order, and the box is overflowing. Not very organized at all.

I use the 3-ring binder, but for all the recipe cards and magazine recipes, I use the 4-pocket vinyl sleeves that you use in photo albums. It keeps everything so neat and organized. I bought them in bulk on Amazon and have one binder for cooking, and a separate binder for baking. After 32 years of marriage and many years before that collecting recipes, I have accumulated hundreds of them and this finally got them into shape.

[karil]

mine are (sadly) in a gallon Ziploc bag -- probably circa 1990. all are handwritten -- many by my grandma. and I guess a few are now on my phone's camera roll. my domestic skills truly are not stellar.

[house cat]

I'm forever dealing with this issue. I have most of them on my computer, a few in my iPhone memo pad, a few more in my camera roll, many of them in cookbooks on a shelf, more of them in those 1970s style sticky page photo books, even more of them in binders with transparent sleeves and some just hanging around here and there in between. I bought a couple of lovely recipe books to handwrite them in, but the task is so overwhelming. I'm thinking of just narrowing down to my five favorite in each category. I'll pass the book on to my kids, who don't eat any of the things I eat. Oh, well.

[sunshine45]

my cookbooks have their own closet in the kitchen, my cut-out and index card recipes are in photo scrapbooks with no special organization (but i generally seem to know how to find everything), and anything i find on the internet is organized on my pinterest account.

[mousiegirl]

I have a deep drawer file cabinet in the kitchen, soon to be two, and I keep them in manila folders with tags for the categories. The very special go into plastic sleeves so as never to be damaged.

[jackthebear]

Accordian file,

Tabs for each category, but first go through and toss anything you have cooked or are unlikely to. We just did this and tossed probably 80% of them.

Now any recipie I like I add to my Pinterest page for them

[qualitygal]

Welcome to my world. I thought there was an end to my collecting, it has toned down. At B&N I got some of those books that you put your own recipes into. I did my own index in the front, they don't have them in some of those and my saving doesn't always match up with what they offer, so the dividers, I put in the back and don't use.

If you can somehow group some of what you have, it's easier. Gooseberry Patch was a good choice, have 2 of those. It'll keep you busy if you're snowed in too.

[Bird]

I am seriously visually impaired since a butcher changed my life forever with eye surgery. Although I have recipes all over the place like you do (which I can no longer read) going forward, I copy or retype my favs in a word processor.

I format them for MY eyes. That is, very large print.

I put keywords in the titles, for searching, like VEGAN, SALAD, CABBAGE (main ingredient), etc. For example, "Yellow Lentil Soup VEGAN NONFAT" I would find it using all of those search terms.

For the old ones, little by little I go through them and when I find one I know I want, I ask someone to read it to me as I type it out and make a file as described above.

One book, Irene Kuo Chinese Cooking, which I have highly valued and used all of my adult life, I am asking DH to read me the recipes one by one (now and then, to not tire him out) so I can type them and SEE them when I want them. - Bird

P.S. I have thrown out cookbooks in the past and I am sorry I did. Browsing old cookbooks can make for a nice pasttime, and the older they are, the more you realize the then-current culture differences.

[oceantown]

Years ago I decided it was time to organize my recipes. I took all my recipes that I used and typed them using Microsoft Word. I titled this folder Recipes, and then I had subfolders for each category. Each folder is automatically alphabetical, so I typed folder names with that in mind. For instance, Salad-Fruit, Salad-Main Dish, Salad-Pasta, Salad-Vegetable. When I look for a salad recipe it makes it very easy.

When I was all done I printed these pages out and put them in a 3 ring binder. The tabs have the same names as the computer folder titles. Many pages have more than one recipe. If there was room at the bottom of the page for another recipe, I just went to the next file and copied & pasted that recipe there. I kept the file names the same, and the recipe on the bottom of the page still was listed separately with its own page on my computer. But for printing purposes I did not want to waste paper. I had lots of recipes!

Then I made another folder for recipes that I had saved, but I had not tried yet. This folder has the title, Recipes To Try. I went through the recipes and threw away those I decided I did not want. I did not print out any of these recipes. But they are very handy and easy to look through on my computer. When I try one of these recipes, I can print it then, or read it from the computer. If it is a keeper, I move the recipe file from Recipes To Try to my regular Recipes folder, and put the paper copy in my 3 ring binder.

I use the 1-inch binders, and have quite a few.

What makes the "Recipes To Try" easy to use, is that most recipes I find and think I want to try someday, are on-line. It is so easy to copy & paste directly to a word document and save it in that folder, under the correct sub-folder (category).

Be sure to back up these recipe files onto a USB drive so you don't lose them if something happens to your computer. I have them all on a USB drive, plus I copied them from that drive onto our 2nd computer, the laptop. So, recipes are in 3 different places.

Don't know if you want to take any of these tips, but whatever method you use, I hope you have a fun project. Just take your time.