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8 Ways to Organize Your Recipe Collection

If you are like me you have a small space in your kitchen stuffed with magazines, recipe books and random loose sheets of your favorite recipes all mixed together. Every time you want to make your favorite chicken you have to fumble through the stack to find it. I don’t know why I have so many recipes because realistically I probably only use about ten percent of them, which makes the rest just pantry clutter.

There are ways you can organize and keep track of all the recipes you use and toss the ones you don’t, but where do you start?

  1. Make them Easy to Find – If you have a few signature dishes that you find yourself reaching for the most, you should bookmark or label them for easy access. Try using an index card or sticky note as a book mark.
  2. Create a Designated Space for Cookbooks – We have a small kitchen so storage space is limited. Keep all cookbooks and recipes in a designated space and categories them by type: dessert, dinner, Chinese, Italian, etc.
  3. Keep Track of Clipped Recipes – Instead of having a stack of loose recipes, create a filing system for them and divide them by category. A 3 ring binder works great but you can always create your own solution. You can also try a predesigned system like Recipe Relish.
  4. Parting with Cookbooks – If you find yourself using only a few recipes from one book, then tear those out and toss the book. This will create more space for the items you do use. You can also add these to your new organized recipe binder.
  5. Parting with Magazines – If you are keeping a magazine just because you like one recipe, tear out the recipe and recycle the magazine. Keep magazine tear outs in your clipped recipes binder.
  6. Digital Storage – If you are desperate for pantry space you could go paperless and store all your recipes online. You can use Google docs to store your recipes and perform a search to find the one you are looking for. You can also share your recipes with your online friends.
  7. Recipe Organizing Software – Another option is to buy software to store your recipes. You can try tools like Big Oven (iPhone and Palm OS), TheRecipeManager (Window and Mach) or Cook’n.

Organizing your recipe collection will help find the recipes that you need and want, giving you more time to cook and spend time with family and friends.

How do you keep your recipes organized?

Looking for more, we have some great tips on organizing the home from the bedroom to the garage.