Organizing Recipes

I’ve been needing to organize my recipes for ages. Actually, I started it some time ago on index cards…and that system totally didn’t work for me because 1) cards were generally too small for some recipes and 2) there wasn’t a good system for keeping them in useful order. It might seem odd that I should want to organize [gasp!] physical, actual pieces of paper when most of my ‘real’ work is produced digitally. I have tried organizing recipes in folders on my computer, and also google documents — but among numerous complaints, biggest deal-breaker is that I don’t like to bring in my computer into the kitchen. As for google docs, it is quite nice I can access it from my phone…until the screen goes to sleep or I have to scroll down when I have wet hands!

Anyhow. The other day I saw an almost really cute recipe organizing binder. Actually, I think it was at Costco. It had almost cute binder, with almost cute dividers, and almost cute papers in it. But it definitely wasn’t cute enough for me actually want it. I did get an idea though, that I should try the “binder” system. It worked in grade schools for organizing bunch of different subjects, why not recipes? So I dusted off a half-size binder that wasn’t being used (I figured it would work better on the book stand than full size one), and with some craft papers and stickers in my stash — I made this!

I imagine I could probably have bought dividers at office supply shop, but I always try to make things if I have supplies for it — they turned out happy looking!

My categories are a bit different from how most people would organize their recipes, probably. I actually have very little recipes for meals (main dish, salads, soups…) because I don’t generally cook from recipes (If I want to learn to make something, I compare multiple recipes, and then make up my own to suit my pantry and and my taste). But I’m starting to have lots of pieces of paper/digital-documents for breads and cookies (along with haphazard notes from experiments!) because with these things, it’s necessary to get proportions of ingredients right or it doesn’t work at all. “Herbs” section will have my incense recipes which I have been working on and aroma therapy blends (which are currently on  pieces of paper stuck inside various books on the topic…digital ones are forever lost I think). I made “drinks” category because I’m hoping to collect and develope recipes for probiotic drinks (kefir and kombutcha!) in coming weeks. “Craft” section has recipes for homemade playdoughs and glue — I hope I will find more things to put in it.

I made book-cover-like flap for bookmarking the page. Because I know I will need it.

Hopefully it will inspire me to add more to it, and cook/blend/concoct more things!