Hi, guys! I’m so excited to share something with you today that I’ve been working really hard on for the last few weeks. It’s my new organized recipe binder printables that I’ve just added to my resource library, which also includes pantry and spice labels, gift tags, and more! Creating graphics is pretty new to me, but this project has really helped me learn a lot. I’m so happy with how it turned out, and now all my recipes have an organized home in one place.
It all started with the New Year. The thing I love most about a new year is that I always get so motivated to organize my life. I wish I stayed that way all year long, but sadly I don’t, so I have to try to get in as much organization as I can while I am motivated. I typically reach my organization quota within the first couple of months of the year. The good thing is that once I put a new system in place I am usually able to keep up with it if it works.
A couple of years ago my oldest son and I started putting together a menu for the week each Sunday. At the time, it really helped my then 4 year old, who is a picky eater, feel like he had some say in his meals. I found he was much more likely to eat the food he didn’t love if he helped me make the food decisions earlier in the week. Fast forward a couple of years, and it still works great for us. A few weeks ago, though, I realized that I am all over the place with my recipes. I have our recipes stored anywhere between my computer, my phone, a few print outs that are scattered all over the place, and pages from magazines that I’ve saved. Luckily, my temporary organization motivation has set in, and I’ve come up with a great binder to corral it all.
Ipicked upa 1 inch binder and some tab dividers at the office supply store. Then I started thinking “hmm…I can’t have just a plain white boring binder hanging out in my kitchen” so I turned to good ol’ Pinterest to spruce it up, but I just couldn’t find what I was looking for out there. Luckily, one of my goals this yearis to learn more about creating graphics, so I thought I’d get started.
The recipe binder design combines my love of two things…Kate Spade and fleur de lis. I love Kate’s spade mix of bold patterns and bright colors, and the fleur de lis is for my hometown, New Orleans. If you came over to my house you could play “Spot the Fleur de Lis” in every room. I love them so much it only made sense to include them in the design.
For the outside of the binder, I created a cover, a back, and of course, a spine, so it’s easy to spot on the shelf. The front cover is even personalized!
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Here is what I used to help put the recipe binder together:
- 1 inch binder or larger
- divider tabs
- heavier paper (I used 32 lb., which is not as heavy as card stock)
- adhesive spray
- washi tape (here’s a link to the striped tape I used)
- label maker(I used pink label tape)
Inside is 16 divider pages for the most common types of recipes, and I also designed some blank divider pages. You could easily just print these pages out, hole punch them, and put these in front of the dividers, but I didn’t want them to get lost within my recipes. I printed the divider pages on slightly heavier 32lb. paper, and I sprayed the backs of each page with an adhesive spray. Then, I adhered each page directly to the tabbed dividers and hole punched them. You could also print the pages on card stock to differentiate them a little more from your recipes.
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To take my personal binder a little further, I covered the tabs of the dividers with this washi tape that I had on hand, and I printed labels on pink tape with mylabel maker.
Once I had the binder itself put together, I spent a couple of hours gathering up and organizing all my recipes. Most of my recipes were already printed. I learned the hard way a while back to make sure to print out the recipes I love. There was a s’mores bar recipe that I found on a blog that was to die for! Whenever I made it, I would just pull up my link to the blog. Then, one day the blog wasn’t there anymore! I have tried other recipes and made my own up, but they still don’t compare to the original. 🙁 Lesson learned! (UPDATE…I’ve recently come up with a s’mores bars recipe that beats the pants off my lost recipe! You can check it out here.) But, I still had some favorite recipes saved in apps that I hadn’t printed out, so I took care of that. Lastly, I went through my magazines and tore out recipes and put those in page protectors (my hubby was super happy to see my magazine pile dwindle down).
Now when my son and I do our weekly menu I have my recipe binder to go to when we get stumped for dinner ideas. It also makes putting my grocery shopping list a lot easier to put together because my ingredient lists are together in one place.
I love this so much, and I hope you do, too! If you would like to receive access to my resource library which includes these recipe binder printables, as well as pantry and spice labels, gift tags, and other printables for all over your home, just sign up to receive emails of my blog posts here. I will never spam you or sell your email address (see my policies), and you can unsubscribe at any time. I just request that you download my printables for personal use only!
By the way, these files are easy to personalize for your family! You are able to add text to the cover page by clicking on the “your family” text, as well as on some blank divider pages at the end of the document. Once you customize it, print it out, and you’re ready to start organizing!
If you’re looking to get organized for the new year, check out my organizational series!
If you like this, don’t forget to pin it!
