Today I am showing you how I put together a home management or household organizational binder. This is a project that is long overdue.
In order to make myself do it, I put this on my January goal list. I have a hard time not completing a task when I know it’s sitting there waiting to be crossed off!
If you aren’t familiar with the concept, a homemaking binder is simply a binder that includes a variety of forms to make your life easier and keep everything in one place. I’ve seen all kinds! Many of them include:
- Weekly or monthly calendar
- Daily schedule
- Cleaning Routines
- Home Maintenance checklists and forms
- Address book
- Emergency numbers
- Babysitter info
- Bill organizer
- Menu plan
- Recipes
- Grocery list
- Pantry list
- Freezer list
- Vehicle repair/tune-up log
- Monthly budgets
- Important monthly dates (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.)
- Financial Information
Instead of reinventing the wheel, I researched and found some printables that would work great for what I was looking to do.
For the household binder printables, I utilized Organizing Homelife. You can access her website here.
For my blog planning area of the binder, I utilized the resource Everyday Enchanting. You can access her website here.
Basically, my goal was to get information all in one place. Often when it came to filling out a form for school, I needed my phone for a phone number, the computer for an address, and my wallet for health information. By the time I gathered all this stuff, I was wasting a lot of time. Also, another goal was to have a place for schedules instead of having them invade my refrigerator space.
In my binder, I included the following sections:
1. Schedules & To Do
In the schedule section, I included sports schedules, school calendars and a running to-do list.
2. Calendar
I’m not sure how much I will use the calendar since I use my iPhone predominately, but it will be a good reference guide when utilizing other areas of the binder.
3. Contacts
I included all our medical information, contacts, and addresses in this section.
To store business cards, I utilize a baseball card three-ring binder sheet. These hold all our business cards together instead of thrown in a drawer!
4. Other Information
The other information I included in this section was a password list and a pertinent information sheet for a babysitter.
5. Maintenance
In the maintenance section, I included a list of all the projects we’ve done on our home including yearly chimney inspections etc. with dates completed. I also wanted to put a spot for a running list of projects yet to do.
6. Meal Planning
In the meal planning section, I included a list of our favorite meals. Sometimes, I forget what meals were a hit with the family and now written down, I can refer to our list when making out our menu for the week.
7. Blog
The blog planning sheets will help me to organize my ideas for the blog and schedule when to post them.
Each section was given a cover page and then at the end of the section, a pocket divider. I like the pocket divider because it will be a place to put something that didn’t fit in a 3 ring or I can stick it in there when I’m in a rush and file it later.
I did not include a section on financial because we do all of our bill paying online.
The best part of the binder is that you can tailor it to your needs and as your needs change, you can update your binder. I know that this could all be done on a computer, but for me, I like to have a binder to grab and bring to the couch and use if I’m filling out forms or such. Also, my kids and spouse now know where relevant information is stored if they need to use it and it’s available to grab quickly.
Do you have a system in place? What works for you?
To life feeling like home!
XO,
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