Organising with Binder Covers – Recipe Organisation, Home, Craft Organisation and more!
Binder covers are one of my favorite organizing tools! (apart from labels).
Some of the ways you can use binder covers:
- Personalise school notebooks
- Home organization/household binders (separate binder for each section or as dividers within the one binder) including budgeting, important info, meal planning, cleaning, taxes, blog planning, health & fitness, travel, lists, teacher planner, craft projects,
- Warranties & manuals
- Planner covers for daily or weekly planners
- Recipe binders & dividers for each recipe section with your recipe binder
- Memorabilia (children’s scrapbook, keepsakes from school drawings, awards etc.)
- Craft projects (and for storing left-over craft supplies e.g. separate color binders for each color of your scraps)
- Sewing patterns
- Different folders for each school subject
- School memorabilia – e.g. 1 folder per year
- Receipts & taxes
- Organize your planner sticker collection
I use binders for pages I don’t refer to often e.g. warranties and manuals. Otherwise I mainly use the Arc planning system. which I shared more about this in this blog post.
I prefer to use binder cover ‘collections’ i.e. the same pattern with different colors, or the same color in different patterns.
Example:
Color Coding Using Binders
I like to use a cohesive color scheme when organizing. Such as one primary color paired with different accent colors (so grey with pink and grey with aqua in the examples below)
My Favorite places to buy binders:
- Amazon has plenty of clear-view & colorful binders
- Officeworks in Australia have binders with pretty patterns printed directly onto the binder, as well as a plethora of rainbow binders
- For something custom, try Company Folders
Officeworks is my favorite place for rainbow colored folders for color coded organization. This aisle is always a test of my self-restraint not to buy more stationery!
I personally prefer clear view binders as you can slip a printable cover and spine in the front. Cardboard style binders tend to be less sturdy and get scuffed easily.
Related: 50 Category Ideas for Color Coding Your Planner
Other options for using binder covers
Binder covers can be made into notebooks. I bound a binder cover with a recipe printable from my shop to create a recipe book:
I made these notebooks by pairing monogram covers I made with lined paper.
Links to purchase the covers: stripe, polka dot, chevron
Links to purchase the covers: Diagonal stripe, polka dot, chevron
This is the lined note paper I made using Photoshop. They’re available as a free download from the printables library
If you want to make your own notebooks, all you need to do is:
- Choose a front and back cover
- Choose inside paper – blank copy paper, lined or print printables to create a custom notebook such as a recipe book
- Choose your binding style. I made the above notebooks using a GBC binding machine (comb binding) – this was before I discovered the Arc system which I highly recommend. It’s a discbound system so you can add, remove and rearrange pages as often as you please!
Related: The Arc planning system
If you’d like to try a binder cover or you’ve been eyeing off one of the designs in my shop, I’ve created a free one for you which you can download here. If you’re already a blog subscriber, this binder cover has been added to the free printables library (enter the password from the confirmation email when you signed up and you’ll be able to download and print the file 🙂
All free printables on my blog are for personal use only.
I love organizing with monograms as it makes the cover more unique!
Create a cohesive look by using the same pattern and alternate different colors:
Another option for color coordinating is pairing the colors of the binder insert with the binders themselves. These are custom covers I made for a customer. I thought I was OCD about things coordinating but this customer took coordination to a whole new level and wanted to color match her pencil case! <3 how these turned out 🙂
Here are some of my favourite combinations!
See all binder covers in my shop here
Want to learn how to make your own printables? Click here
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase I’ll receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you)
