Organize your stacks of takeout menus using a magazine rack, or a bulletin board, or create your own menu binder which you can organize by cuisine. If all the manual work is too much for you, go digital and let your phone lead the way.
Food delivery has made it extremely easy to order in, be it from your favorite burger joint, Chinese takeaway, or the Indian curry takeout.
If you love ordering in and trying out new restaurants and cuisines, you’re sure to have an overwhelming number of takeout menus stuffed in your drawers and lying about in your home. But, when you want to order in a hurry, you can’t find the menu you’re looking for.
We have some simple solutions up our sleeve to make ordering your Friday night takeout a little easier, so if you want to know the best way to organize takeout menus, keep reading.
How to Organize Takeout Menus
Collect and Sort
Go around your home and collect all the takeout menus you can find in your drawers, hanging on the fridge, lying on the table, etc. Once you’ve collected all of them, you can put them in one place like a drawer, a file, or someplace where you can get started.
Sift through the menus and sort them out. Keep them how you want and simply discard the duplicates and the ones you no longer have any use for.
Organize Takeout Menus
Organize the takeout menus according to your preference, using a method that will allow you to access the menu you need easily and quickly. You could organize the menus by:
- Cuisine: Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Lebanese, Korean, Greek, Japanese, etc.
- Restaurant Name: Sort the menus according to the restaurant names from A to Z.
- Preference: From your favorite restaurant to the least
- Location: Distance of the restaurant from where you live. Is the restaurant close by or very far away?
- Cost: From least expensive to most expensive
Choose an Efficient Way to Store Takeout Menus
Sorting your takeout menus is one part of the process, but the most important step is to store them conveniently and efficiently so that they are easily accessible when you need them. In this section, we’ve discussed some handy takeaway menu storage ideas.
In a Drawer
If you don’t have too much time to get special menu storage going, you can simply sort all of them according to your preference and put the entire pile into a drawer to have them all in a single place.
Or, you can simply toss all the menus into a Manila folder, label it “Takeout Menus,” and place it in the kitchen drawer.
Use a Magazine Rack
You can place all your takeout menus in a magazine rack, which you can place on the counter, desk, or in your living room.
This will ensure they are close at hand and are easily accessible. Magazine racks are the perfect size to hold onto your takeout menus of varied sizes, and you can flip through them easily and find the one you’re looking for.
Wall-Mounted Mail Organizer
If you receive a lot of takeout menus and restaurant coupons by mail, you can install a mail organizer next to the door or in your entryway, where you can put them away immediately without bringing them inside and leaving them in random places.
Storage Basket
You can hang a small basket inside the kitchen cabinet door, on the back of your bedroom door, or in a closet and store your takeout menus for easy and quick access.
Menu Necklace
Punch a hole in the takeout menus in the same place and string them together using yarn or twine to make a menu necklace. Hang it on a coat hook or any other fixture in the kitchen for easy access.
Bulletin Board
You can stick your takeout menus onto a bulletin board in your kitchen with pins. Although your takeout may be easily accessible, your bulletin board can become messy when the menus pile up.
Clipboard
You can sort all the takeout menus and clip them onto a clipboard, which you can conveniently place inside the kitchen drawer for quick access.
Plastic Accordion Folder
Sort and organize your takeout menus according to one of the methods we discussed earlier. Store them in a plastic accordion folder, which you can easily buy from a stationery store.
Menu Binder
You can create a takeout menu binder having clear page protectors, into which you can place a single menu. You can organize your menu binder with tabs based on how you have sorted them.
Create a Menu Book
Creating a menu book is the best way to keep your takeout menus organized if your order is delivered or takeout frequently and you have loads of menus lying about. Here are the steps of how you can go about creating your menu book:
- Take a 3-ring binder with plastic sheet protectors.
- On the first page, write down all your favorite restaurants and their phone numbers.
- Next, sift through the menus and throw away those you don’t want and will not order from.
- Sort them using any of the methods we have discussed earlier.
- Put each takeout menu into a plastic sheet protector and group them according to cuisine, cost, etc. and use index dividers or post-it notes to separate each section.
- Place the coupons in a separate sheet protector or clip them inside the front cover of the binder with an alligator clip.
- Place your handy takeout menu binder in the drawer or next to the phone, microwave, or cookbooks to easily access it.
Go Digital
In today’s internet age, where most businesses have an online presence, most restaurants, including small local, mom-and-pop restaurants, have their menus on their websites.
You can simply bookmark or put your favorite restaurant in the favorites folder, which your kids can use to pull up the takeout menus easily and quickly.
You can also access the digital versions of the restaurant’s menus via your smartphone.
Digital versions are easy to access and super-convenient, eliminating the need for messy paper menus that only clutter up your home.
Discard Takeout Menus Regularly
Once every few days, take time out to sift through your takeout menu and coupon collection to weed them out. Discard the menus of restaurants that may have shut down or those you have multiple copies of, etc.
And, if you receive a new menu along with your order, discard the old one and replace it with the new one to reduce the clutter. Coupons come with an expiry date, so make sure to throw out the old ones.
FAQs on How to Organize Takeout Menus
What is the Best Way to Organize Takeout Menus?
There is no perfect way to organize takeout menus. You can do it according to your preference, i.e., by restaurant name, cuisine, ethnicity, cost, etc.
Do I Need to Buy An Organizer to Store My Takeout Menus?
Although you can purchase a readymade organizer from the store to keep your takeout menus, this is not an absolute necessity.
