Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Organizing Recipes

If you've got yourself a good stash of recipes, you might be wondering what to do with them.  My old method was to throw them in a drawer store them ever so neatly in a drawer.  That method didn't work out too well.  You see, the pile grew and grew and grew.  I became afraid to open The Drawer.  So I didn't.  Unless there was a new recipe I wanted to add to The Drawer.  You see it's this vicious cycle that left me using the same old, same old recipes week after week.  All because of my fear.

Thank goodness for mothers though.  She saved me.  After having dinner at her house one night, I began to confess my habitual 'recipe drawer stuffing'.  It was difficult to share, but it needed to be done.  She cried with me, and reassured me that there was hope for The Drawer.  She walked over to her pantry and pulled out a binder that changed my life.  I pretty sure I heard angels singing when the binder opened and I saw all of her beautiful recipes stored neatly in sections.  There was hope for me.  I could do this.  I drove my sorry butt to Walmart and purchased a binder along with sheet protectors. 

I worked tirelessly for 3 straight hours tearing up cooking magazines, straightening out crumpled papers, and wiping off food splatters.  I was weary, but I pressed on.  Keeping on until every section was complete and every recipe protected.  When I was finished, I cried.  My nightmares were over.  No more repeat cooking.  No more scary drawer.  No more messy recipes.  Just a beautifully organized binder...

{Binder in the Main Dish section}

{Example of Section Tab}

I hope this post brings you a ray of hope; a beacon of light shining unto your dark drawer of recipes.

Happy Organizing!

2 comments:

Joy Campbell said...

You are hilarious! Of course your mom would have an organizing tip for recipes. She is amazing and I can see you are following in her footsteps. By the way, I love the picture of family feet. That would make a cute card. You are very creative, my dear.

Heather said...

I have started typing out my favorite go to recipes as well and have been plugging them into a book on iphoto (you could do this on any of the publishing sites) and am going to print out my own cookbook at the end of the season or year (haven't decided yet) so that a) My kids have a book to look back on of THE REGULARS, and I can remember what those exact meals were that were always a hit :) Thinking about giving them as gifts to my family too )