Meal Planning / Recipe Binder

So sorry guys that it has taken me so long to get this up but here is my long awaited meal planning binder / recipe binder. Once I have used it for a little while I hope to also post about how I meal plan. Please excuse my horrible picture quality I just used my iphone for the pictures. 

So as you can probably tell I am using a 3 ring binder mine is an inch and a half because it is what I had leftover from school. I find binders are the best way for my OCD self to organize. I went online and found a cover I liked for now. 

When you first open up my binder this is what you see. I have a large zipper pouch, plastic pocket dividers and in those dividers are page protectors. Now that you see what I used I will show you how I organized my binder. 

Inside the large zippered pouch I included some shopping lists that I printed online and just cut into strips. I am including links for a few items I used if you are interested in using them as well. (http://www.vertex42.com/Files/pdfs/2/shopping-list.pdf). 

My dividers are labeld: Meal Planning, Breakfast, Mains, Sides, and Desserts. I would recommend a holiday tab as well but I store all of those recipes in a seperate 1/2 inch binder. Eventually as my recipe collection grows I forsee adding more dividers and breaking down categories further. 

Now lets take a peak into a couple of my divders. 

Again I used good ole google to find a meal planning sheet that worked for me. I finally found this one which is perfect I love having places to write two snacks for each day because as you all probably know I am 100% a snacker. I am not so strict on eating things on certain days so if I happen to switch around things during the week I just draw arrows or normally I will have written in pencil so can just erase and rewrite. Here is where I found this printable (http://giftsweuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Printable-Weekly-Meal-Plan.pdf). 

Now to take a look into my Mains Divider. 

All of my food category dividers are set up the same way so I will just show you one. In each section there is 3 places a recipe might be. 

1) is in the front divider pocket in the section. This is where I put recipes I want to try whether they are printed from online or clipped from a magazine. 

2) is in a page protector. The recipes that make it to be typed and in page protectors are recipes I love and want to make again. 

3) which is not pictured is the pocket in the back of each section. These will be recipes from the front section that I have made and love so that I am able to type them up and print them to go in page protectors (and blog them). 

I want to eventually figure out how to post a pdf to my blog so everyone can easily print my recipes but I am not there yet. 

Well guys I really hope this helps someone who wants to get a little more organized in their meal planning. If you have any questions feel free to leave comments and as always follow my blog or instagram which is Jenny221222 if you want to see more from me.