The Lazy Organizer’s Club

We had some great Show and Tells at our September meeting. People brought their notebooks and organizing kits and they all looked fabulous!

Your project for this month is to start getting your recipes organized. The easiest way to do this is to put the recipe cards you already have into a three ring binder. Just buy a package of photo page protectors with two or three sections per page and insert your recipe cards or torn out magazine pages.

Label each category with a self adhesive index tab stuck right to the page protectors. Organize your categories using labels such as Beef, Bread, Chicken, Pasta, Pork, Salad, Soup, Vegetables, etc. Instead of Cheese Bread, I will title the recipes this way;

Bread, Cheese
Bread, Cheesy Monkey
Bread, Corn Sweet
Bread, Zucchini

Chicken, Cacciatore
Chicken, Pot Pie
Chicken, Ranch Thighs
Chicken, Teriyaki

It makes them a lot easier to find.

If you have recipes that you use frequently from your recipe books, start writing these down and adding them to your Recipe Organizer so you have them all in one place. This will save you so much time and also shelf space since you may have an entire cookbook with only one or two recipes in it that you actually use. Now you can store that recipe book on a bookshelf in another room instead of giving it valuable space in your kitchen.

If you want to go a step further then you can start organizing your recipes on your computer and printing them out. This is great for making meal plans, shopping lists and sharing your recipes. My Aunt was recently visiting and wanted all my favorite recipes so I just printed them all out for her. It’s also simple to add recipes to my blog or e-mail them to friends.

I use a large font so my recipes are easy to read while I’m cooking and I put them into page protectors so they wipe clean. I like to write notes on my recipes of exact cooking times, substitutions and changes I’ve made. It’s a pain to pull the recipe in and out of the page protector so just write on a little sticky note and slide it in with your recipe. You can update your recipe on the computer later when you have several of them.

Of course if I were you, I would splurge on the ultimate computer recipe organizer, Mastercook. If you like working on the computer you will love this software. It does everything you could ever want to do with your recipes for only $20.

Last but not least you really have got to make a Lazy Meal Planner. You’ll be so happy that you did!

Your assignment for this month is to make a two week meal plan to share with everyone. This will include 5 main course recipes per week, for a total of ten. I want everyone to include two crockpot recipes and two other extra easy recipes for those busy days when we don’t have a lot of time to cook.

If you have the energy to figure this out, include recipes that you can prep together. Example: cook up a pound of bacon to use in strips one night and chopped another night. Chop up a couple onions and peppers that you can keep in the fridge for a recipe later in the week. Just make sure they are tried and true recipes that most people will enjoy. So that’s:

· 6 regular recipes
· 2 crockpot recipes
· 2 extra easy recipes

You have until our next meeting on October 5th to E-mail your recipes to me. You don’t have to do the shopping list. I’m going to do that part.

If you haven’t been able to attend our meetings or you are just reading on-line you can still participate and you’ll receive a copy of all the meal plans that we do. Just get me your recipes by October 5th.

As organized as my recipes are, I’m still not good at making meal plans. The only time I really do it is when I’m going to be having company at my house. I’m hoping that making meal plans with the class will get me motivated to keep it up. Now get to work organizers!!!

The Lazy Organizers Club

I held my first session of The Lazy Organizers Club tonight. There were 8 of us that got together and talked organizing. We’re going to do some organizing projects together in the future and generally motivate each other to keep at this tireless, thankless job of Housewife and Mother. It’s got to be done so we might as well have fun!

The best part was, we got to eat Apple Cobbler because I didn’t ruin it. I actually remembered to use the apples this time. It’s always good to have apples in your apple cobbler.