Recipe Organization and Meal Planning Binder

Hi guys!  I have to tell y'all . . . cooking is one of my least favorite chores.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I enjoy the cooking.  It's the meal planning that I struggle with.  Having to come up with something yummy to put on the table seven nights a week is a cruel form of torture to me.  Even when I have found a bunch of new recipes via Pinterest and I know what I want to make, I can never find the recipes again when I need them.  At least not easily.


But I have found that things go a lot more smoothly around our house when I have a meal plan to follow, so I have come up with a system that really works for me.  Now, I don't know about you guys, but I find most any chore to be a lot more palatable with a hefty dose of cuteness, so I spent a weekend on the computer digi-scrapping my family's favorite go-to recipes and making fun recipe cards.  You don't have to do that.  Print them out in black and white, hand write them on index cards, or rip them out of magazines -- whatever works for you.

I bought myself this cute photo album with insert pages for 4x6 photos.  I can fit two photos per page, front and back for a total of 4 per page.  I left the first two pages {or 8 photo slots} empty -- I'll show you why in a minute -- then inserted a cutesy divider page like so:

{OK, so I had actually filled those first two pages when I took that photo, but you leave them empty for now!}  Then I alphabetized all my printed recipes and inserted them into the photo slots of the pages behind the divider.  With all my go-to recipes organized now, I can sit down and plan out a week's worth of meals.  I just pull out the recipes I want to make and move them to the front two pages:

For example, this week we will be having Korean Beef on Monday, Mustard Chicken on Tuesday, etc.  I have all the recipes at the ready when I come home from work and have to cook dinner in a hurry.  At the end of the week I just put the recipes back in their slots at the back of the book and start over.  I often like to try new recipes, but I'm not going to take the time to make a cutesy recipe card until I know my family loves it and it becomes a "keeper".  For those meals I just print the recipe out from the website where I found it, fold it and tuck it in the slot for the night I want to serve it:

Easy cheesy!  I also put a pocket page at the front of the binder for storing pads of paper for grocery lists and printed recipes that I think I might want to try.

And it all sits in a little photo album that looks cute sitting on my kitchen counter!  It's just a simple little trick, but it has made a huge difference in simplifying our evening routine!  I hope that some of you guys will find it helpful, too.

Have a great day, friends!

Amy