House & Home Binder, Day One

Welcome to Day One of the tour through my House & Home Binder.

Let me start by letting you know that just about every element of organization for my binder came from the brilliant Tsh Oxander. (You’re seen me mention her before; she’s the brains behind the big Spring Clean.) I was innocently blog surfing when I stumbled upon her insistance that a Home Management Notebook would tie all the pieces of my life together. I was skeptical at first because I am a child of modern technology; my iPhone holds just about everything I need. When she shared how she pairs her Google Calendar with this hand-written tool, I was swayed. It was my journaller-meets-techy dream.



The super-cute binder cover was a Happy-Birthday-To-Me present. It is happy and colorful and everything I had dreamed it could be. Ahem. It's great. If you're ever in the market for something similiar, try Andrea's shop on Etsy, knitty bitties.

My binder is half-sized- 8.5x5.5 or so. Instead of chopping a bunch of paper in half and because I LOVE index cards, I bought mega-sized index cards and punched those to go in the binder. I like this size binder because it fits in my bag and I like these pages because they're sturdy enough to take out of the binder (when I'm grocery shopping, for example) without destroying them.

I broke the binder into sections using index card dividers. Some sections are long and involved while others are a single page. It took me a while to choose sections that made sense to me; I'd suggest using post-it notes in place of the actual dividers until you've used your binder for a couple of weeks and know what you want where.

Without Further Adou:

The Plan- The Plan is a form I fill out either each evening in preparation of the next day or (when I'm really on top of it) the week or so before. This is the very most important part of the binder so I'll be starting here.
Calendars- I keep monthly calendars in the binder to make note of big events/vacations/work schedules. This is not my primary family calendar; for all specifics I work off of our family Google calendar.
To Do- My to-do lists are broken into sections. Some are stream-of-consciousness, feed-the-dog type lists and others are more goal-oriented like things I want to do this summer or preparations that need to be made for a specific event.
Food- The Food section includes meal planning charts, grocery lists, new recipes to try, and a pantry/fridge inventory sheet. This section saves me more time than any other part of the binder because if I take a half hour every other week to assess what we have and make a meal plan with a grocery list, I'm not left wondering what we'll be eating every afternoon when I get home from work.
Cleaning- Schedules for cleaning means I'm not constantly feeling like I should be scrubbing something. I have weekly, monthly, and annual expectations that I then schedule into The Plan. Some days, I clean. Most days, I don't. Having a flexible plan means I have structure but not guilt. It's glorious.
Prayers- If I tell you I'm praying for you about something, it's probably written here. (In Amanda-code for the more sensitive topics, just in case!)
Meditations- Scripture that I'm memorizing (or have committed to memory, amen!) is listed here. I also include interesting or challenging quotes that I'd like to spend some time thinking or journalling about.
Budget- Most of our family's financial matters are handled electronically but for smaller tasks or seasonal budgets (namely Christmas), I keep a hard copy in my binder for easy access.
Coupons- When I become a full-fledged-coupon-using crazy I will be happy to have a whole section devoted to my findings. For now, I use this section to file Groupons and restaurant.com coupons so I don't forget about them.
Shopping- Anything non-grocery gets listed here, which helps me consolidate my Walgreens trips. While I haven't run the numbers, I'm pretty sure listing what I need and only shopping every three or so weeks for toiletries has saved me a good chunk of money. Plus, there's always a couple of things on the list that, by the time I go to the store, I have no need for and cross off entirely.
I also have a running list of gifts other have mentioned wanting (Mom! Cordless Iron!) and gifts I'd like (since I never remember when Christmas and my birthday come around).
Crafting- I have a perpetual list of crafting projects to try. I'm a makin' fool.
Blogging- The list of what I want to share with you all is here. I also keep a list of topics I'd like to journal about for those days when nothing is particularly pressing.
Birthdays- Happy Birthday! I LOVE celebrating people so I've created a full-year schedule of the birthdays of my friends and family.
Projects- When they require a serious budget and planning and maybe an architect, To Do items move to Projects. I currently have our sweet baby house broken up by room with everything I'd like to accomplish listed. Even though some of these might never ever happen (new hardwood floors throughout the upstairs?!) I feel better that they're listed and not cluttering up my brain.

Whew! Overwhlemed yet? Don't be. This binder took me a long, long time to create and I'll be sharing the actual documents just in case you want to take mine and customize them for your own use. I recognize that this is above-and-beyond nuts but having some semblance of organization for your home will, I promise, make your time there more productive and more enjoyable.

Next up: The Plan!