I know how easy it is to get caught up in pinning everything and anything that looks amazing on Pinterest, but how do you keep tabs on things you actually try and love on there? After creating an account with Pinterest, I quickly realized that I wasn’t trying nearly as many recipes as I pinned and that I was honestly losing track of the recipes I did try. I literally could not keep up with all the random recipes I was printing. (I also could not keep up with the recipes I received from someone I knew or got from a cooking class.) I needed to come up with a way to organize myself so I could make recipes again (or not!).
Now, I have to confess – I truly enjoy trying new recipes and making them my own. It is a fairly common occurrence for me to change bits of the recipe to suit me and my family. Many of my recipes have at least some kind of notation on them to remind myself of what I changed and how it went. As you can probably imagine, I cannot remember everything I change or adjust – life is just too crazy sometimes – so I have gotten into the habit of writing on the recipes as I make the changes. That way, I do not have to try to remember later. Needless to say, it was important for me to be able to organize all of my recipes. So, this is where my idea for a recipe scrapbook began.
When I first made my recipe scrapbook, I decided that I wanted it to be somewhat like a regular cookbook. This meant having recipes organized into categories and then organized in some fashion within those categories too. I came up with a variety of categories that I would put the recipes into, and I also decided to alphabetize the recipes within each category. This way, every recipe had a place and I could (hopefully) easily find it.
I am not going to lie… this process was incredibly daunting and it took several hours to do the first time. The reason it took me so long, though, was that I had accumulated way too many recipes in a super unorganized stack. If you decide to try this and start with only a few recipes, it should be a total breeze!
After using the recipe scrapbook for a little over a year, the binder I had chosen (a whole 2 inches!) was barely holding together because it was so full. I decided to make a second book to split the sections into, which I called “Volume 2” as seen above. I kept all the tabs the same from the original book, but I simply moved the second half of the categories and their recipes over to the new binder. It has worked beautifully!
Making and keeping a recipe scrapbook has honestly changed how I think about and keep my recipes. I can always find recipes I need, and I can always find a home for a new recipe quickly. I also have a nice way of keeping track of my notes on recipes. It even helps to have a quick place to look for good recipes when I am planning out the next few weeks of meals (see my meal planning post for details on that). If a recipe just does not meet my family’s “will make again” criteria, then it does not go into the scrapbook… it gets scrapped instead!
If you decide to try making a recipe scrapbook too, I hope it works as beautifully for you as it has for me! If you have any suggestions or ideas on how you organize your recipes, I would love to hear from you in the comments below!
