If you are at all like me, you might possibly have a mountain of printed out, ripped out and scribbled down recipes in a pile or magazine file. This makes me bonkers! It takes for ever and a day to find what I am looking for, usually I give up and make something boring for dinner, “Yes stir fry again”
So this is no secret, organizing recipes. I choose to go with a binder, plastic pages and divider tabs. This mountain only took an hour to organize (why didn’t I do it sooner!) and it brings me such joy.
One of my “to do’s” for the 2013 is to have a meal plan every week for dinner. I can see the logic in this, shopping at the market once a week, knowing what you are doing when it’s 530pm and your family is used to eating at 6pm. Meal planning will be a big improvement for me. I started this week, and so far so good. I am not one who plans Monday we will have this and Wednesday it’s that, this is just a bit too organized for me, what if I am not in the mood for that on Wednesday. Anyway, I just choose seven meals and then cross them off while I go.
Today while organizing the recipes, I thought it would be great if I could keep the weekly meal plan in front of the binder, writing it out on a sperate page every week seemed like a bit much (funny I know) so I thought what if a dry easer pen works on a binder… guess what, it does! Happy day! This little discovery makes me so happy (sad but true).
Off to make dinner, hum I think it will be Arabian Lentil soup, oh and my recipe is right there in the binder on the counter… ah a total improvement!
molly b 
cute idea! i need to do something like this!
Was thinking I would do a little post on our meal plan, too. Love your cute “Weekly Menu” – “source” is a great idea.
Had to let you know you inspired me! I have have my recipes in a looseleaf binder for, yikes, almost 20 years now and most of the pages had fallen out … so I was just shoving ’em back in haphazardly and the organization was totally shot. Still I was bumbling along using the binder every single week in that condition. Read your blog – clear plastic pages, brilliant! And I even had them laying around, nothing to buy. So in 10 minutes I ended 15 years of futzing around with my falling out pages. I love my recipe binder now and it might even make it to be passed on to my kids someday.
Awesome Jen!