I’m a little bit obsessed with organisation.
So meal planning and finding ways to store recipes has been right up my alley. Over the years I’ve tried many different ways to organise my recipes, from photocopying favourites, to writing them out, through to storing them digitally.
It helps that I LOVE stationery, so I have a bit of a bias towards paper systems. But I also love the thought of a minimalist life without a whole lot of ‘stuff’.
I wanted to share what I think is the best way to store recipes, and hopefully it helps you a bit too!
I’ve so many ways to store my recipes. I’ve bought recipe books and journals where I write the recipes directly in, I’ve typed them up on the computer and printed them out to stick in, and I’ve written them out on to templates to organise into folders.
None of these are completely fool-proof, but I find paper is definitely a more flexible way to store recipes because I can change my system if I find it doesn’t work.
Back story: I found an awesome app where I could enter all my recipes, as well as adding in what was in my pantry already, so that when I made my meal plan it would automatically create a shopping list according to what was needed and then update my pantry as ingredients were used.
I loved it. It was really easy to enter the recipes in to the app and it was easy to find them again when I needed them.
But then, the app didn’t get updated, and then it disappeared. I lost all the recipes I had put in there, except for the ones I could remember and could find again somewhere else.
I was so mad!
But I learnt my lesson. And what it also showed me is that meal planning and how I store recipes is actually a creative process.
The physical act of flicking through the pages, remembering the taste and smell of the food, and memories that go with it helps me to decide what my family will eat.
When people feel overwhelmed they don’t even what to think about what to eat. That’s why meal boxes are so popular; someone else can think about that for them.
So meal planning, I discovered, even though it is an act of organisation, is actually a creative process. We’re tapping in to our emotional brain while we do it.
I have two folders to store recipes in that are our favourites. These recipes are used regularly and I have written them out onto templates and laminated.
I had tried to only keep a smallish number of magazines so when I needed to get rid of my oldest ones I would photocopy the recipes I still wanted to try, and I would pass the magazines on to someone else to enjoy.
Once we decided we liked something new I would write the recipe out and then laminate it to protect it from spills and stains.
That’s when it makes it’s way into the recipe folders.
Now each time I make a new meal plan, it’s like I’m piecing together a new cookbook. My workspace is scattered with recipes, and magazines and cookbooks, with our family favourites and new inspiration in all the glossy pictures in front of me.
So while using a digital system satisfied my minimalist urges, using a paper system meant I could get creative, be a little bit more flexile with how I stored them, and helped me to find plenty of mouth watering recipes when I needed them. Win win I say!
I’ve inspired many people recently to up their meal planning game. If you want to find out how you can do the same, you can join my FREE Master Your Shopping List workshop coming up next month!
Starting May 4th, you’ll learn the strategies that I use to make sure my shopping list stays within budget and we are still eating good food that tastes amazing. You can register using this link.
And if you’re wanting to learn more about how you can live your life with more intention and CREATE a life you love instead of just CONSUMING it, them make sure you sign up to my email list, and join my community over on Facebook, at Filled to Overflowing.