Friday, January 11, 2013

My Home Management Binder

For 2013 I figure I need to be really organized if I'm going to accomplish my goals with the little one here. I've always been big on list and calendars and such but I really needed to get it all in one place so I can easily keep track of things and manage my week.  So this year I made a home management binder!

I used a few different sources for the printables and thanks to Money Saving Mom for sharing these resources. By the way, Money Saving Mom is one of my favorite blogs to visit.  She always has great posts and shares the best deals, go check her out!

For the printables I used two different sources because they both had pages I wanted to incorporate into my binder. I loved the pages for goals, chores, menu planning and creative ideas at Motherhood on a Dime so I grabbed those there.  Then for the binder cover, some inspirational quotes, contact info and weekly to do's, I went to The Harmonized House Project on the WorldLabel blog. I printed everything out I needed and got started.  Note that the rest of this post is very picture heavy!


For my supplies I have a 3-ring binder, some page protectors, a set of dividers and a hole punch. Pretty simple stuff that you probably already have laying around the house.


Here's my stack of printables after I was done.  With my laser printer this went pretty quickly.  I imagine if you have a simple inkjet you could probably eat a meal while the pages were printing.


To save some paper and to make my binder less thick and easy to manage, I printed my weekly menu plan on the back of my weekly to do list.  This way I can even take the page out of the binder and have my whole week on one page if I need to.


My little assistant slept through this whole project.  I guess she was bored with all the organization.


Here's the binder with the cover in and my stack of papers once they had been punch and organized. I labeled my dividers and put them in the order I wanted: 2013 Goals, Weekly, Contacts, Household and Creative.


I wanted this inspirational quote right at the beginning of the binder so I would always see it when I opened the book up. It's a good reminder.


First under 2013 Goals is my goal checklist.  I have this written on a separate sheet of paper right now so I just need to fill it in. Also under this tab I have a time schedule page that I'll use to try to manage my time with the baby and work and such.  That will help me figure out what I need to adjust in order to keep the family/work balance I want.


The next section is for my weekly pages. Here's my first one filled out.  I love that I can easily cross things out as I go, there's room to add more items or appointments and at the bottom there's a notes section where I can put reminders.  And there's also another great quote on this page.


On the back is my weekly menu plan.  Right now I'm only doing dinners but later I may decide to add in some lunch ideas.  Since Mike and I do breakfast separately and I don't yet have to plan meals for Natty, there's not much reason for me to plan for the other meals.

I put a page protector after this page to hold any recipes I plan on making this week so I have easy access to them. When I go to plan the next week, I can move the page protector to the next weekly page (which also makes it my book mark) and then put in the next week's recipes.  This makes it so easy for me and I think it will also inspire me to try more new recipes and go back to old ones. If the recipe is in a book, I can just write the book and page number on my menu plan.  Super easy.


The next section is Contacts.  The first page that I have is an emergency contact information sheet.  I figure this is really important now that the little one is here.


Next I have several pages for addresses.  I'm going to take my multiple address books and emails that have contact info and combine it all here.  When I did Christmas cards this year I had to look in 4 different places for addresses and that's just crazy.  So I need to combine it all in one spot so it's simple and easy.


The next section is Household.  I'm not entirely sure what this section is going to look like so I figure it's going to evolve throughout the year. I added the chore chart here just so I can get an idea of things I regularly want to do.  I also added some page protectors so I can maybe put things like home decor or improvement ideas or business cards for contractors and such.


The last section is Creative.  I printed out a few of these idea lists to put in this section.  I can use one page for my blog ideas, one for scrapbook and crafty ideas, and maybe one for ideas on games and activities to do with the baby.  I also put page protectors in this section for anything I might want to keep here.

So that's my binder.  I'm sure I'll add stuff and it will evolve as the year goes along. I also have a separate little book that I keep my coupons in. I use The Couponizer to organize all those and I love it. So when I'm getting ready for the week I just need my binder and my Couponizer and I'm good to go!  Gotta love the organization of it all!


Oh I also wanted to share this awesome calendar I had made at Shutterfly. I wouldn't normally get a calendar printed but I had a coupon for a free one so I gave it a shot.  I have to say that I am in love with it!  The print quality is excellent and I love how much you can personalize it.  I will definitely be making one again next year.


I hope you all enjoyed seeing how OCD I am about organization!  Those of you who know me know how much I enjoy planning. Have you made a home management binder? What do your sections look like? What's worked to keep your family organized   I would love to hear your stories!  And thanks for stopping by and reading mine!

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