What You'll Need

• Recipe boxes should be sized to fit index cards and should be broken into four groups: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and desserts. You should buy two matching boxes. Split each box into two groups. The first box would contain your breakfast and lunch recipes. The second box would hold your dinner, side dishes, and desserts. Dividers for each group helps further organize the boxes and make it easier for you to select the recipe you want.
  
  

Index Cards and Dividers

• Breakfast recipes can be further divided into two different groups. Hot breakfasts and cold breakfasts. Anyone can boil water and throw in a little oatmeal or mix batter for pancakes, but as any creative grandmother can tell you, there is more to a hearty pancake breakfast than a plain old mix of batter. There are all sorts of seasonings you can add, such as ginger or cinnamon, as well as fruits such as apples, strawberries, or bananas. Too much or too little and you'll wish you had it all down on a recipe card.
  
  

Benefits

• Dinners are full of groups and subgroups, as are desserts. You can split your dinner group up into fish, red meat, chicken, as well as vegetarian dinners. Side dishes can be inserted in between dinners and desserts, and desserts can fall into many subcategories such as cookies, cakes, dairy, and fruity dessert dishes. The next time you want to make a really unique dinner for that special someone, go to your recipe box. You won't spend hours stressing over dinner---or the time you wasted hunting for that recipe.