Menu Planning With A Recipe Notebook

I constantly hear from others that menu planning takes too much work.  While trying to live on less, I've learned that menu planning makes a huge difference in the budget though as I'm much less tempted to eat out.  I also am able to take advantage of items on sale and use them in a reasonable amount of time instead of items getting lost in my pantry.

I will admit that many times I simply write down a few tried and true meals without giving it much thought.  The times I do work a bit on our menu, I'm much more excited about cooking though. 

For my menu planning I keep a three ring binder full of recipes.  I bought some simple dividers with tabs and labeled with common categories such as breakfast, main dish, dessert, etc.  

When I see a recipe I would like to make, I stick it in the pockets of my binder.  Every so often I take the time to file all of them in the correct category.

When I feel I'm in a cooking rut, I will sit down with my notebook and create a menu.  Usually, by the time I'm done, I have several weeks worth of menus.  


As I cook each recipe, I make notes on it about what we like/dislike.  This helps a ton when I make it again as I tend to forget how I tweak a few recipes.

How do you menu plan?