Finish It Friday...Recipe Organization

Welcome to the Second Finish It Friday!  I was so hoping that the project that would be finished today would be my kitchen (aaah!), but it's not quite done yet.**  A few plumbing issues, some grout, and some paint, and we should be good to go.  Here's where we are now...

I'm in love with my new kitchen.  We're getting there...almost at the finish line.  

In the meantime, I bring you something related to the kitchen...my recipes.

Organizing my recipes has been something I've thought about for a while.  After I graduated from law school, for Christmas, my mom lovingly wrote out her and my favorite recipes on colorful cards and organized them in a box.  It came with this note:

I used the recipe box for many years.  Then, it occurred to me that I might prefer them to be organized in a binder.  I love binders.  I kind of have a thing for binders.  They organize things so nicely, where you can see everything, and you have pretty, helpful, colorful dividers telling you where everything is.  So, I gathered my supplies...

...and I started putting the recipes in the binder.

As much as I love binders, they just didn't work for my recipes.  First, the recipes are on these cards that my mom used and gave me many, many of:

I had plastic sheets/inserts for the binder, but I had to tape the cards together to use the whole plastic sheet thingy, and that was cumbersome.  Also, I didn't like the visual clutter of having more than one recipe in a plastic sheet.  I like the idea of one recipe at a time.

So, what did I end up doing?  I replaced the box and went back to the card system.  I bought this box at Ikea (came in a set of 2) for dirt cheap, put it together, and put my recipe cards back into the box system.  I also filed recipes I had cut out but had yet to put on a card (I just tape them to the card).

Here's the finished product:

Aaaah - order is restored.  Back to normal.

The recipes are organized by category (the dividers were originally created by my mom) as follows: Pickles and preserves; appetizers and snacks; beverages; fruit; vegetables; salads; soups and stews; bread; breakfast; eggs and cheese; pasta and pizza; potatoes, rice and noodles; meat; chicken/turkey; fish/seafood; sauces; cookies and brownies; cakes; pies; refrigerated or frozen desserts; candy; other desserts; and "cheat sheets."  

I created the cheat sheet divider, and it contains my grilling times sheet, spice swap table (what you can substitute for one spice if you don't have it), and other conversion tables.  In the front, I keep the special menus I've created and used (like for Christmas dinner), and small recipe books like the one that came with my slow cooker.

So, there are my recipes, all neat and organized and up-to-date.  

What are you organizing?  I'd love to hear about it.

Thank you for stopping by.

**Post edited on January 9, 2013, and the kitchen is now done. See this post for the before and after!