I am with the organizationally challenged group too! This past Christmas I spent hours trying to find the recipes I wanted!

Okay, here's my usual method:

I stuff them in whatever pockets, nooks and crannies I can; put them on the fridge with magnets thereby guaranteeing that I can never find what I need; tear them out of magazines and use them for bookmarks and then give away the books forgetting about the recipes. I collect so many recipes and I never use any of them. I've always seen recipes more as idea-sparkers than cut-and-dried directions, so I tweak everything or just get the general idea and then make it up when needed.

Even though some of the ideas above are just brilliant and sound easy to implement and maintain, I felt the need to speak up for the organizationally-challenged among us! :)

We use Paprika.

I'm using Evernote to organize mine.

I have a 3 ring binder (actually 3 of them now).  I have them in sections: breads & muffins, breakfast, dessert, other, meat-less, beef/turkey, chicken, snacks, veggies.  I go through them now and then and will get rid of some or move them to the front.  I have been (be it very slow) typing some that look like we had thrown them away and putting in sheet protectors as they always get spils on them.  

I use a binder and organize by topic - it's not super neat, but I'm generally able to find what I need pretty quickly.  Just one recipe per page and remove any that you don't love.  If you have a lot, you could use several binders, but I wouldn't relish recopying all mine onto note cards or retyping on the computer and I really like the full page format because it's so easy to just print new finds off the computer and add them to the binder.

I just keep only 2 recipe books which I barely use anymore. I have memorised all the recipes I need to use. I have a simple schedule for meals and leave out all the rest. I rather have my children snack on natural raw vegies, or carrots,  salads and eat fresh fruit with live probiotic yogurt than have sweet deserts.

Best Wishes

I have been saving a few on Pinterest and now get frustrated when I find good recipes that are not on it!

I typed it up on the computer, saved it and printed it.  I organize them using the menu planning files (pretty binder covers, dividers, pages, etc.) from here and add to them as I need to.  Once I got the bulk of it in the computer,  aintainence is not that big of a deal, esp. if I am cutting and pasting a recipe. ;) 

I get photo albulms from Walmart - ones that look pretty, and I write down the recipes on index cards, and put them in the photo sleeve.  I get the albulms that have 2 photo sleeves per page, so on the top of one page I have the index card tell the name of the recipe and the ingredients and the second index card I write the steps to the recipe.  If the recipe is very long, I'll make sure it falls on the left side of the page so that the whole recipe  can fit on both the left and the right side.  (Does that make sense??) 

You can either split the photo book into sections, or have one book for appitizers and sides, one for main meals etc.  Then your recipes are all together, and they look pretty sitting on the shelf. 

I know this is old school, too, but my Mom has individual pocket folders labelled, "desserts", "appetizers", "main dishes", etc...Her recipes get clipped and stuffed into those, then those are kept in a binder. She claims it works like a charm, and she doesn't have to re-type anything - just find the appropriate folder in her binder.

I have many good recipes photocopied out of my cookbooks, cut out of magazines, and jotted down from a friends, all in page protectors in a binder right now with no real organization or divisions to them.  There are many more great recipes I've found that I would like to add, but it seems so disorganized already.  I have to shuffle through every time I want to find one, and it's very not uniform looking.  I'm a little OCD btw. ;)  Sooo... old school recipe cards and box?  type out recipes into a formatted page and print them out?  something else?  I don't want to need the computer open to use them, and I like having them all in one place.  The magazine cut outs often have several different categories of recipes on the same page so I will have to recopy those if I want to separate everything into categories.

Any ideas?  What do you do?

Thanks. I used to be so organized but once I adopted my son (who is very ADHD), life got crazy. I sometimes think that he has rubbed off on me!! LOL

Hi Rhonda,

As someone who thrives on organization also, I can relate to what you're saying. One thing I have done is to make a list of everything I need to do over the course of a day/week/month that is not done automatically (for example, I don't need to list taking a shower, or brushing my teeth, etc.). I created a very simple weekly to-do sheet and assigned certain nights for certain tasks.

For example, on Monday nights I try to do kitchen-related duties: making bread or snacks for the week, cleaning out the fridge, wiping down the oven, etc. If there are meals later in the week where I can do some simple food prep ahead of time, I might do that (shredding cheese, etc.). On Thursdays, I pay bills and/or update our budget and work on paperwork. Friday nights I always work on homeschool plans for the following week (deciding what days we will do a certain subject, go on a field trip, etc. I will also take this time to look at our math lesson for the week ahead of time - this helps so much to not be trying to figure something out at the last minute).

If this appeals to you, perhaps you could figure out some main categories of tasks you are trying to get done and assign them a day (I keep saying day but I do most of this stuff at night). I am not always this rigid, though I do tend to prefer a set schedule! That is not realistic with kids and family life, though. I do try to always have a TO DO list going of special projects and those I want to get done regularly. I find that taking even a few of those and assigning them a day helps so much. If I have to change my schedule, at least I have something to change from.

If any part of this is confusing, I apologize. I have written this between the times my son has needed help - we've got a bad stomach bug around here.

Best,

Kelly

I am a single mom of a 5 year old who is very ADHD. I work 4 days a week and really need to find better ways to organize my time/schedule etc and to be better organized in general. I used to be very organized until I became a mom. Now I seem to tread water. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks,
Rhonda