If you have been collecting recipes and don’t know what to do with them so that they are easily available when you want to try a new recipe, this is a great way to organize them. You will need:

• 3-hole binder

• Plastic sheet protectors

• Index dividers

By putting the recipes into plastic protectors they won’t get splattered when you are cooking. Sort your recipes according to the types of foods. You can follow the order of a meal – appetizers, beverages, salads, soups, vegetables, main dishes, desserts. Then choose any special categories that you cook often, such as international type recipes, quick breads, pastry and cakes. By then you’ll know what categories you need. If you find that you need more later, you can easily add them, as long as they don’t need to go into any particular order.

Type the tabs for the categories and put them into your dividers. If you are doing them in a definite order be sure to put them in the order you want permanently, because it’s time consuming to rearrange them. Then place the dividers into the binder.

To get the recipes ready for filing, tape them onto white blank paper and put them into plastic protectors, filing them behind the corresponding divider as you go. It saves space and paper if you tape recipes onto both sides of a sheet of paper. When you get done your recipes will be neatly organized. But you’ll immediately notice something – your categories have disappeared!

The protectors have holes of their own which makes them extend beyond the divider tabs, and you can’t see the categories. An easy way to remedy this is to cut along the outside edge of a protective sheet, leaving about one inch uncut on the top and bottom so it won’t flop open, then insert a divider into a plastic sheet. Now all your categories are visible again!

Keeping recipes in a soil-free binder that you can keep in a handy place in your kitchen will be a great tool for menu planning.

This is a project that will take a little time and effort, but in the long run it’ll save you oodles of time because you won’t have to sift through a pile of recipes to find one that you want to try. And you can do this as you collect more recipes so they will always be organized. It’ll never be a big time-consuming project again.