Your Grandma's Vintage Favorite Is Making A Trendy Comeback

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One of our favorite kitchen design trends of this year has been what we'll call "the great cozification." Sure, sleek minimalism can be chic, but there's something special about a personalized kitchen made eclectic with unique, vintage touches. We spend so much time in our kitchens, so it makes sense that a cozy space would be more comforting than a cold, modern one. If you're looking to mix some artfully vintage accents into your modern kitchen, we've spotted a resurgence of one detail your grandmother would love: the recipe box.

For decades, these were the best way to keep recipes organized. They're more than just a cute decoration; recipe boxes are designed to keep recipe cards collected and handy, often over the course of generations as they're passed down. Sounds a lot cozier than opening the your list of bookmarked recipes on your tablet, doesn't it? Aesthetically, an antique recipe box is one of the key must-haves for creating your "grandma-style" kitchen. But there's more than meets the eye. Many people have been looking to unplug and get more hands-on in the kitchen, ditching smartphone scrolls for flips through cookbooks — this allows you to collect treasure-worthy antique cookbooks and stands to keep them on as you cook. A recipe box offers all this and more because the cards inside are often collected from your own family members; looking through it will make you feel connected with them.

Recipe boxes emerged about a century ago. Lifestyle magazines offered subscribers recipe cards they could tear out. People began swapping them, then writing their own and it wasn't long before many home cooks had large collections they needed somewhere to store. Any old container like a shoebox seemed to do at first, but some companies saw an opportunity and made boxes designed to perfectly fit these cards. Betty Crocker was a trailblazer here, debuting a wooden box around 1920. 

These were largely replaced as people began using recipes online, but many seem to miss the more analog approach. "It grieves me that I didn't get the recipes of certain things from family members that have passed away," writes an anonymous user on a Reddit cooking thread. "I've decided to start a recipe box, just in case my kids miss my mac and cheese one day." A recipe box is an instant heirloom, plus a system for keeping recipes safe from spills or getting lost. Hunt through flea markets, secondhand stores, and resale sites like eBay and Etsy to find one that speaks to you. This wooden vintage box on eBay, for example, is under $35 and boasts a country-chic look, while this vintage carved-pattern wooden recipe box on Etsy is elegant and ornate. You can also start your own tradition from scratch with this understated Drastar acacia wood recipe box on Amazon.