We’re on week 6 of the money-saving grocery shopping challenge. This week you’ll learn how to create a kitchen binder and why you need one!

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Welcome to week 6 of the money-saving grocery shopping challenge. If you need to catch up, click the links below:

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5

I hope you’ve enjoyed this money-saving grocery shopping challenge!

And I hope you’ve learned how to lower your grocery bill and save time when grocery shopping.

Plus, I hope you’ve printed out the free printables because today you get to add them to your kitchen binder!

This is our final week of the challenge, but I have plenty more money-saving shopping tips coming up in future posts.

Grocery shopping isn’t exactly one of my favorite things to do. It takes time to plan meals for the week, look through recipes, search what’s on sale, then make the list.

Not to mention having to shop for the groceries, bring them all into the house, then put them all away.

I could really use a magic grocery fairy that will do all that stuff for me!

Being able to do anything quick and easy is always a plus, especially when it comes to grocery shopping. This is why having a kitchen binder is a really good idea.

Having a kitchen binder is a great way to keep all your important kitchen information all in one place. Your binder can hold recipes, meal planning sheets, shopping lists, etc.

Keeping everything you need in one place saves you a lot of time. When it’s time to plan for meals and make meals, you’ll have everything at your fingertips.

What you need to create a kitchen binder:

• 2-3″ 3-ring binder
• Page protectors – be sure to get enough to hold all of your recipes
• Page tabs (optional, but helpful)
• Pencil pouch – these are great for holding coupons and pens/pencils
• Printable pages – see below

How to create a kitchen binder:

Step 1: Print out the free printables or create your own.

You can create your own pages for your kitchen binder if you wish. Pages to include would be:

• Cover page
• Recipe category pages (appetizers, beverages, bread & pasta, desserts, main dishes, meat, poultry, seafood, soups & salads, vegetables)
• Recipe inventory page (optional, but helpful)
• Menu planning pages (favorite meals list, weekly menu plan, new meals to try)
• Grocery price book
• Grocery list page
• Inventory pages (fridge, pantry, and freezer inventory sheets)

Or you can print the ones that I have already made for you!

• My Kitchen Binder (includes cover page, recipe cover page and all categories listed above, menu planning cover page, favorite meals list, recipe inventory, and weekly menu sheet)
• Inventory sheets (includes fridge, freezer, and pantry inventory lists)
• Grocery price book

Step 2: Start adding the pages to your kitchen binder.

• Slip the cover page down into the front of your binder.
• On the inside, place the favorite meals list in the very front.
• Place the recipe inventory pages after the favorite meals list.
• Put the inventory list sheets in next to make it easier to see what you already have.
• Place the grocery price book next so you can easily see prices and sales cycles.
• Next, place the weekly menu plan in the binder and add some paper for grocery lists.
• Place all the recipe categories into page protectors.

Step 3: Sort and purge your recipes.

This will probably take some time if you haven’t done it in a while. Choose a day where you can sit down to go through all of your recipes.

Fortunately, all of my recipes were already organized, so I just needed to transfer them over to my kitchen binder. But they weren’t always that way. I used to have recipes all over the place! Some were stored on my computer, some I had written on cards that were unorganized in a box. Most of them were clippings from magazines I had just stuck in a notebook!

It took a lot of time, but I finally got them all sorted and organized and my system works so much better for me. And saves me a lot of time when it comes to planning my weekly menu, too!

If your recipes are not already organized, here is what you need to do:

• Gather all your recipes: Get all your recipes together. Print off any recipes stored on your computer, dig through your recipe box, copy favorites from cookbooks, etc.
• Sort and purge: Go through all of your recipes and throw away any that you’ll never use or that are torn and unreadable. Then organize them into these categories: (Categories are completely up to you. I just find that these categories work best for me to stay organized.)
  • Appetizers
  • Beverages
  • Bread & Pasta
  • Desserts
  • Main Dishes
  • Meat
  • Poultry
  • Seafood
  • Soups & Salads
  • Vegetables
• Place recipes in page protectors: After you’ve organized all of your recipes, start putting them into the page protectors. Full sheet recipes can slip easily into the page protector. If you have recipes clipped from magazines, you can glue or tape them to a full sheet of paper.
  • Tip: Recipe cards can also be taped to a full sheet of paper. Put a strip of tape down the left side of the card so that you can flip it over if you need to read the back.
• Add the page protectors to your kitchen binder: Now that all your recipes are organized and put into page protectors, put them in the binder. Add empty page protectors to the back of your binder so you can easily add new recipes.

Step 4: Create a recipe inventory.

This isn’t necessary, but it’s extremely helpful. Creating a list of all of your recipes will save you so much time when meal planning. You will be able to see every recipe you have in case you want something different from the list of your favorite meals.

How you create a recipe inventory is completely up to you. I find it easier to write the category at the top of the page, then list the recipes under each category.

Or you can just list them all out on a sheet of paper and keep adding to it. Whatever works best for you.

Place the recipe inventory at the front of your kitchen binder either before or after the favorite meals list. This way it’s all in one place and easy to see right away.

Other things to add to your kitchen binder

• Pencil pouch: Pencil pouches are great for holding coupons, especially if you only have a few. When you clip out coupons, just place them in the pencil pouch. You’re also going to need pens and pencils to fill out your pages. Keeping them in a pencil pouch means you don’t have to search for a pen ever again!
• Divider tabs: Divider tabs will help you see the organized sections easily. You can make your own divider tabs by taking a small piece of paper and folding it over, then taping it to the page protector. Place the divider tabs down the sides of the page protectors so they can easily be seen.
• Everything else category: At the end of my recipe book, I have a category that contains recipes for “everything else”. These are recipes that don’t fit into the normal categories. For example, I have recipes for slime, kinetic sand, and play dough. I also have an old newspaper that is full of Christmas recipes from the 90s.

A kitchen binder can save you a whole lot of time when you’re planning and preparing recipes. I have a lot of recipes pinned on Pinterest, but sometimes that’s not the best option. A few times I’ve gone to try a recipe and the website was shut down. I learned my lesson and started writing down my favorite recipes.

I still don’t trust computers 100%. To me, there’s nothing more trustworthy than good old paper and pens!

How do you keep all of your recipes and kitchen essentials organized? Do you have a kitchen binder, too?

If you’re looking for a complete binder to get your entire home organized, be sure to check out my Home Management Binder. It has everything you need!