recipe organization and meal planning / my kitchen command center

One of my goals this year is to be more organized when it comes to cooking. When dinner time sneaks up on me I hate scrambling around trying to figure out what to cook. I find that I am more likely to enjoy cooking and trying new recipes if I keep organized ... otherwise it just plain stresses me out.

1. Modern Hatch Menu Planner: Caravan

2. KASSETT Magazine File: Ikea

3. Pick your favorite scrapbook paper or create your own and print it out.

I totally forgot to take a picture of this kitchen cabinet before I had at it. Sorry about that. Just imagine a shelf full of unlabeled mismatched binders and a slew of cookbooks—some of which were gifts from my wedding 10+ years ago that I've hardly ever used because the recipes just didn't tickle my fancy.

First step: I went through my recipe books. If I liked most of the recipes in the book I kept it. On the other hand, if I only liked a handful of recipes out of the book then I copied the ones I did like onto cards and stuck them in my recipe binder. I then got rid of the recipe book, that in my opinion, was taking up valuable space.

Second Step: I used matching paper on the front, back and spine of each of my binders to give them a unified look. What a huge difference that made! My first idea was to use scrapbook paper, but when I didn't find exactly what I was looking for I used this free quatrefoil seamless pattern from fab n' free. Yep, I'm a busy mama and instead of making my own I cheated.

{my kitchen command center binders: recipes, family, coupons, emergency plan, etc.}

Third Step: I purchased and printed out the (holy flippin' cute) Modern Hatch Menu Planner from Caravan and framed it in a $1.99 NYTTJA frame from Ikea. After writing out my menu plan for the week I realized that my dry erase marker would not come off when I tried to erase it. Grrr! I knew this frame used plastic instead of glass when I bought it but I thought it would still work the same. Oops! I decided to laminate my meal planner and then frame it without the plastic in front and now it works great. Hooray!

Fourth Step: After I got this far I decided to switch things up a bit. Although I had weeded through some unwanted cookbooks, the ones that I did want to keep looked mismatched, jumbled and they kept falling over when I pulled one out to use it. Boo! I purchased some KASSETT Magazine Files form Ikea which I used to secretly conceal the clutter ...  excluding the two that were to long to fit.

That's it! Small changes to one cabinet in my kitchen that have made all the difference ... and I'm loving it! What projects have you been working on?

{images: Little Paper Dog}