September 9, 2020

How I Organize Cookbooks

Do you use cookbooks? I know that not everyone does, but I love using cookbooks and my recipe binders when I am menu planning. I enjoy the analog nature of paging through a cookbook and writing down the menu plan and shopping list. We recently removed a bookshelf around our refrigerator and that meant that I needed to come up with a different layout for the cookbooks. If you’re curious, you can see that before and after here.

When we removed the bookshelf I took a look at every cookbook and decided which ones to keep and which ones to give away. This forced me to really think about what we use regularly and what we can do without. There were a couple cookbooks that I only use one recipe out of so I made a copy of those recipes and put them in my recipe binders. You can see my recipe binders on the bottom shelf of the island bookcase – this post shares how I put them together.

I knew I wanted a basket of some sort that could hold cookbooks on this counter – I found this vintage French apple basket at one of my favorite online shops – Dreamy Whites. It’s one of my favorite purchases. I love to walk by this corner during the day – do you have corners in your house like that?

I also put the cookbooks that I don’t use regularly (but still want to keep) in the cupboard above the vintage basket. This keeps it from looking overcrowded and cluttered and keeps the cookbooks in one place. I also have my recipe box up here as well.

I love this wire basket for cookbooks – it’s the perfect size for a current cookbook stack. If you need some help with menu planning you might like this kit (it includes a Recipe Binder Kit pdf) and/or my Weekly Menu Planner Notepad. You can see my favorite cookbooks here on Amazon if you’re interested!