Recipe Organization and Storage

I have many memories of both of my grandma’s and my mom going to their recipe storage box or shelf of cookbooks to find an old familiar recipe for dinner or dessert. I also have a recipe box, a few cookbooks, and a stack of recipes I have tried/want to try stored on a shelf but I find there is no real organization to them. Especially with the huge availability of recipes online, it can be tough to figure out how to organize your recipes. 

People tend to fall into strong preferences on their thoughts of “paper” in organizing! Some people are lost without having recipes printed on paper. Other, paper recipes are the things of nightmares! Which person are you? Once you have figured that out (I know, you probably already know!), then jump down to the corresponding section!

Online Recipe Storage

Pinterest: Boards, Boards, and more boards! Set up a Pinterest account and start adding new boards. I have a few that I use to help with my recipe organization:

• Family favorite- Meaning this is a recipe we had growing up or a tried and true recipe.
• Tried and liked- A newer recipe that I have tried before and liked it. 
• Recipes to try- Recipes that caught my attention, but I wasn’t able to try them right then and there. This is where I keep the cozy stew recipe that I found on a 100-degree day in July! Definitely not going to make that right now, but I will in November!
• With those three categories, I break them up into subgroups so I can find things a little easier. I have Dinner, Dessert, and other subcategories. So, when I am looking for something for dinner that night, I look in the “Recipes to try-Dinner” board so I don’t have to filter through a bunch of desserts and breakfast ideas to find a fabulous pork chop recipe. 

Google Docs: A friend of mine recently shared her recipe storage system using Google Doc’s and I thought it was brilliant for managing your most frequently used recipes. She keeps her most used, and family recipes saved in one google doc file. Each recipe has its own page(which Google kindly provides a table of contents for). She has found the perks to be:

• It is easy to add custom notes to the recipe.
• The document is searchable. 
• It can be shared with friends and family. She shares it with her mom so they can easily share new successful recipes with each other. 
• It is quick and easy to copy and paste the text from an online recipe into the book, and typing out an old family recipe can take a while, but once you do it, the recipe is there forever.
• The document is accessible anywhere. Access it from your phone when you are in the grocery store and can’t remember if the recipe calls for diced or crushed tomatoes. 
• An app like Evernote would also work as a similar method.

App- Paprika Recipe Manager: I have not used this, but have heard many people rave about it online. It does have a cost of $4.99 to purchase, but if you are a family trying to juggle a ton of meals/recipes, it may be worth it. 

From the app, you can turn recipes right into meal plans and grocery lists to help you get organized. The recipes are searchable and you can add notes or import family recipes to your personal account. 

Physical Recipe Storage

Binder: A binder, complete with recipe cards or page protectors to slip in recipes is a popular solution for storage. There are a ton of gorgeous ones available online or on Etsy to choose from. Or take the budget route and repurpose (and decorate) an old-school 3-ring binder. 

Recipe box: I have a handful of recipe cards written by my mom and grandma that are precious to me. Even though I have found the recipes online and they are saved in my Pinterest account, baking from the recipe card they used is a special part of baking for me. I have a wooden recipe box that holds index cards with many family recipes inside. Many of these recipes I found online, and also have saved in my Pinterest board titled “Family Favorite” so I can access them anywhere.  I decorated my recipe box with some fun recipe box divider cards from Etsy.

Cookbooks: Many people love cookbooks, but then struggle with how to store them. Incorporating them into kitchen storage and using them as decor pieces are popular suggestions. If you are just interested in a few recipes from the book, try copying them from the cookbook and saving them with your other recipes either in a binder or online. Then you can get rid of the cookbook (unless there is a reason to keep it), and clear out some clutter!

Getting to the root of the issue

The main reason that people have a hard time with keeping up with storage systems is that they are trying to force a system to work, that isn’t right for how they naturally think or work. 

Trying to force your Grandmother, who doesn’t have a smartphone, into keeping track of all her recipes on Pinterest is setting yourself up for failure. I use Pinterest and cook from the recipe directly on my phone in the kitchen. Even if Grandma has Pinterest on the computer, she is not going to run back and forth between the recipe on the computer and kitchen to make a loaf of banana bread. Grandma needs a nice big binder to easily store and see what she has accumulated over the years with page protectors to keep it nice and tidy while she is cooking. 

If you have a system that works for you, great! Keep doing it! You don’t need to feel forced to switch to the latest and greatest system just because a bunch of bloggers online find that it works for them. You do you!

What tips have you found to help you organize your recipes? I would love to hear them in the comments below or on our Instagram page!