Do any of you use a household binder or Flylady-esque control journal? I made one years ago in my Flylady heyday, you know….before I realized being a Flybaby still meant I had to work on cleaning my house?! My baby steps didn’t survive, but my love of this journal sure did! I love the idea of having all the really important information for the daily lives of our family all in one place. My husband can see what’s on the schedule or menu for the day, he can add something to the shopping list, I can grab the book when I need important info. quickly or throw it into the car with me if I’m going to have downtime during errands or appointments and want to get some things done. True, my iPhone has and will continue to be my go-to all-in-one planning and productivity tool, but there are still some things that can’t be done on an iPhone conveniently. I know, it was a shock to me too!
Jen @ iHeartOrganizing spent the month of March walking her readers through creating their own home binders. It motivated me to resurrect mine and get it back into real use. And honestly, what office-supply-loving, organizationally addicted girl doesn’t love an excuse to play with tabs and planning sheets and label-makers?!
Mine still needs a little work, but here it is as of now!
I made use of the things I already had from the last time I worked on the binder and just added a few new things, this pretty green folder was one of my new additions. I made the coversheet in MS Word – the words in the lower right hand corner are from Psalm 127 3-5(a).
I keep the things that need my attention but don’t fit any of my tabbed categories on the inside cover so I can’t forget about them. I may be organized, but I’m a terrible procrastinator so maybe having to look at those ugly papers will make me take care of it sooner?!? Not sure how much hope I hold out for that though, those papers still sit right there. I may need to rethink that……..Anyway, I have pens and pencils and erasers and dry erase markers in the pink zipper pouch and the inside cover sheet was too cute to resist and was a free customizable form courtesy of Jen, she’s making all of her cool free printables available until Saturday 4/9/11 so hop on over there and download them if you want to make a binder of your own!
I reused these great plastic colored & tabbed dividers with pockets on both sides, they’re great and perfect for this application! I used my label-maker to make clean labels for each of the following tabbed sections:
- Calendar & Scheduling
- Schooling
- Faith & Motivation
- Menu Planning & Shopping
- Money Management
- Cleaning & Maintenance
- Ideas, Lists & Projects
- Contacts
This is our daily workbox scheduling grid, it helps me make sure I can plan out what I want in the boxes before I start grabbing things…it’s cut down on a lot of the set-up time each night. I laminated a lot of our grids and schedules to cut down on waste, we have dry erase markers but I would HIGHLY recommend the wet erase markers for over-head projector transparencies because they don’t wipe off without a damp cloth and the tip is much finer than dry erase marker tips!
The I printed out a year-at-a-glance calendar and highlighted my husband’s schedule so I have that handy.
Jen made and shared a really cute monthly calendar, I did laminate this to cut down on the amount of time I spend taking things in and out of sheet protectors. Which is really just my sneaky way of saying: “Don’t judge me for how laminate-happy I went with this, yeah, it might be a little wasteful to laminate a calendar I can only use for one year but I did it anyway and I like it, so there!”
I bought these during an Office Max buy 1 get 1 free sale. My plan is to put information for things coming up in a given month. April’s tab has a print-out of information from a women’s retreat I am attending, May’s has my son’s summer camp info. and I think I am going to start putting my church bulletins in here too!
This is our schooling section. I have the catalog for the curriculum that I’m just itching to order next year’s curriculum from sitting up front and center. In the same buy 1 get one free sale I mentioned about I got the tabs in the next picture. There’s a section to keep my state’s legal info., one for curriculum ideas and order forms, and the others are shaping up to be subject-oriented.
I signed up to start receiving the Old Schoolhouse magazine a few months ago and they gave me a free PDF copy of a planner that was something like 600 pages long! I’m slowly sorting through it and printing off what I want. There recipes, resource ideas, websites and countless gems like this chart of famous scientists and what discoveries they made!
This is my Faith & Inspiration tab. I have bible verses that have impacted me, quotes & book passages I love, a sweet letter of encouragement I received a few years ago from my cousin who is a faithful and seasoned homeschool mom, our family purpose statement and personal homeschool statement of intent can also be found here.
Next we have Menu Planning and Shopping. We have take out menus on one side of the pocket, recipes on the other.
I picked up a package of baseball card holder sleeves and use them to keep any coupons I clip and convince myself I will use. I confess I one day hop to be just like most of the people featured on that Extreme Couponing show. I don’t see how it’ll ever happen, but it’s what I want to be when I grow up!
My weekly meal plan and grocery shopping list, laminated of course.
Since these pictures I’ve added a freezer inventory sheet to this, I picked that up at Jen’s site.
Here you have the Money Management section. Receipts on one side, Bills & Statements on the other.
I have a budget worksheet and this AWESOME bill tracker checklist. I didn’t have ANY idea what automatic payments were coming out when and this sheet made me investigate it and now I can keep track and avoid any “Oops, that came out and I totally didn’t plan for it!” moments.
I guess I skipped taking pictures of the contents of my Cleaning & Maintenance section altogether. I guess my brain just seizes up at the mention of scrubbing or dusting something. ::Shudders:: I so wish I had a housekeeper……but I digress…… That section has an auto maintenance log for each of our vehicles, all of Flylady’s Zone’s and detailed cleaning lists, a
nd…well, that’s it. I should make daily, weekly, monthly & quarterly checklists for cleaning things but I just won’t make myself waste time making something I know I can’t force myself to stick by! Maybe I’ll start a list of all the things I can sell so I can afford to hire someone to clean my house for me….now THAT’s an idea!
nd…well, that’s it. I should make daily, weekly, monthly & quarterly checklists for cleaning things but I just won’t make myself waste time making something I know I can’t force myself to stick by! Maybe I’ll start a list of all the things I can sell so I can afford to hire someone to clean my house for me….now THAT’s an idea!
This next section now looks a little different than the pictures, it’s my Ideas, Lists & Projects tab. It now has a set of smaller tabs inside that I labeled Woodworking, Soapmaking, Books/Reading, Blog Stuff & Misc. I’ve got woodworking plans and notes and pictures, soap oil price lists and a SAP chart, notes from past batches, reading lists, our library book list, a checklist of blog maintenance things, a place to brainstorm blog ideas and extra notebook paper for whatever else I may need to make a list for. Because if I know anything, I know there will be more lists!
Finally we have the Contacts tab! I keep the HSLDA contact info. in the front pocket, and addresses I need to transfer either to my iPhone or address book on the other.
A business card holder of course.
And address book tabs. I also added a babysitter information sheet with any information a babysitter could potentially need. My husband was looking through my book a few minutes ago shaking his head and talking about how he could never function like this with all the lists and tabs but once he flipped to the babysitter sheet he said “Huh, that’s a good idea!” Well, that’s all my organizational neuroses needs to consider this project a brilliant success!
The End. 
It's beautiful and so nice and tidy! So unlike mine :/ I want my binder to be like yours when it grows up.
Hi, I only just found out about the binders so haven't created one myself but decided to peruse around and see what everyone came up with and get some great ideas!
You gave some great tips for additional resources that I must check out-cheers!
Love this! I am working on my own binder, again. Does Old Schoolhouse still have those planners? I just subscribed and I think I got everything from them but that. Thanks!
WOW! Love it, but I am no where near that organized. Impressive, none-the-less!
This is amazing! I so need to do this. Thanks for the links and explaining just where you got everything!! LOVE,LOVE,LOVE it!
Oh my word! That is mind-blowing. Someday I resolve to be more organized… but right now, that totally stresses me out just to look at! Just stopping by from the HHHop, lovely site!
http://heyitsjade.blogspot.com
This is great! I have something like it, but not as neatly organized. I may borrow a few of your ideas to add to mine. Thanks for sharing!
By the way, I'm here from the Hip Homeschool Hop!
I have a homemaking binder that I love. (I got it from http://www.moneysavingmom.com) I absolutely love how it keeps me organized. Love getting new organizational ideas! Stopping by from HHH
Nice work! I personally LOVE your lamination!
On the coupons, I promise I am not a paid affiliate, but I got started with thegrocerygame.com- its been great! Pays for itself! All about the spreadsheet.
Stopping by on the Hop from Homeschool Science Press!
I love it! I have a household binder that I am constantly changing and adding to. I'm really surprised at how much I rely on it. Great post!
SUCH a great post! I actually just bought a new binder last week in preparation of making a Hoousehold binder! Now I just need new printer ink LOL Stopping by from the Hip Homeschool Hop…I will definitely be back
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