Recipe Organization (& a Wedding Gift Idea!)

When I shared photos from my kitchen a couple months ago, I said I would also share my recipe storage system!

I have recipe boxes for recipe cards as well as two notebooks that I use for recipes I’ve printed out from the web.  I try TONS of new recipes, so I wanted to be able to take notes on the recipe and decide whether to add it to my binder or to toss it.

One binder has main dishes and soups.

The other binder has sides & sauces, yeast breads, quick breads, breakfasts, desserts, and miscellaneous.

For the tabs, I used the cheap write-on tab dividers and made hand-written washi tape labels.

I carried this concept into a gift for a friend who recently got married!

I know she loves to cook, so I made her a recipe storage notebook.  I started her off with about 25 recipes, but she can add more!

I designed a cover (cute kitchen graphics from here!) and a label for the spine and slipped the pages into the notebook.  (The notebook is red, but there is a clear pocket on it.)

Instead of hand-writing the tabs, I printed out the categories, cut them out, and glued them on the divider tabs.  I also made a table of contents/title page for right inside the cover.

The categories for her notebook were:  appetizers, breads, breakfast, desserts, main dishes, side dishes, snacks, soups, miscellaneous, and reference.

I put a few of my favorite recipes into each category to get her started!

In the reference section, I found some helpful printable kitchen charts (just by googling) and stuck those in too.

I know I love my recipe binders, so I hope she enjoys her gift as well!

What’s your method of storing recipes?  
I used to keep all of mine on cards, but eventually it was just easier to print them out.  (Sometimes I also just cook from my Kindle or phone without printing the recipe until I know it’s a keeper!)

If  you like this idea, feel free to pin it for later!