How do you organise your recipes?

Colleen from Florida wrote...

I love the idea of menu planning but have no organization for recipes.

How do you organize your recipes?

I have them electronically, paper, and websites.

Thank you!

my recipe box

Colleen, I love this question.

I used to be one of those people who drooled at reading recipes. I'd have every intention of cooking or baking the delicious _________ and then life would happen.

I wrote a post on organising my recipes about 18 months ago - not much has changed but here is the summary :)

1. I've learned to be brutally honest with myself and only print recipes I know I will actually cook. That one step will save you tons of cooking angst and lots of paper :)
2. Once the recipe passes the taste and easy-to-make test (I don't believe in doing any dish that takes longer than 30 minutes to prepare) and I know I'll do it again, I put it in one of my recipe flipfiles. I currently have one for main courses, desserts, muffins (hey, I love baking muffins). Here's what I do with small recipes when I don't want to waste a whole page for just one.
3. I also have a flipfile for new recipes I want to try.
   
4. We have a list of about 24 meals that we both like (things like cauliflower I have to eat elsewhere :)) and I do my weekly menu plan based on these meals.
5. Only when I feel bored cooking the same things, then do I go looking through that flipfile to try out my new recipes. Of course, some are so compelling you just have to cook them straight away :)
   

So in summary, I'd say

• be realistic about your time and money constraints (we all know some recipes where you'd have to go SEARCHING in exotic places for the ingredients; those are not my types of recipes!)
• categorise well (according to how YOU think and live)
• declutter regularly

What are your best recipe-organising tips?