I was just curious how everyone organizes their recipes. Mine are a complete disaster and I can never find anything. I have the 3x5 card system that I learned from mom. When I got my first apartment in college I typed (on an actual typewriter) on those cards all my favorite recipes. They are in a box and I have to sort through them one at a time to find what I want. Then there is all the recipes I've printed off the internet. I have random pieces of paper from coping things down from tv or wherever. I tried using a computer program someone got me for xmas but it was a pain to use and its not always easy to cook while looking at the computer screen.

Has anyone mastered their recipe organization?

I have a huge binder that has plastic page protectors. I also use the photo album sleeves for the recipe cards. They are not organized- but everything from the package from the pecans that the pecan pie recipe came from to the stuff from Grandma resides there.
New recipes are generally stored in Outlook on the computer until I try them. It is easier to create a folder on the computer and when I am in the mood I can print it.
I do have the old recipe box from the 7th grade Home Ec class I took with those recipes in it. Another idea I use is to write the page number of the recipes I use in the back of cookbooks- so there is never any confusion of where the banana bread came from or who I made it for.

I use a three-ring binder subdivided into sections for soups, apps, seafood, dessert, etc. No plastic. When I cut recipes out of magazines, I glue them onto plain paper, otherwise I just print them off the web, or type them up myself. I like to do it this way because I can add new recipes very easily, and because I like to make notations and changes on my recipes. I have dozens of cook books too, but I tend to be able to remember where to find a particular recipe.

I too use the card boxes and I organize everything by category.

Some of my categories are meats (for pork and beef, etc.), ground meat, poultry, seafood, soups and stews, Mexican, Chinese, on-the-grill, eggs, desserts, cakes and muffins, beverages, rice and potatoes, pasta, etc.

I've got a few more categories, but that's how I organized mine. I bought the separators with the little sticky-uppy tabs to write the name of the category onto.

oohh. I love the idea of photo sleeves for the cards. I've thought about a binder but never knew what to do about the cards. Having everything together would be good for when I'm in a browsing mode trying to figure out the week's menu.