Household Notebook! It's time to get ORGANIZED!

Household Notebook 

It took me a while to get my household notebook together.  I thought and thought about what I needed and what exactly I wanted to keep track of in this binder.  I knew menus and cleaning.  It took me a bit to decide what else.  So I wrote a summary of my average week during the school year and during the summer and came up with dividers for my binder.  Then I searched the Internet (mostly pinterest) and found printables that met my needs and what I didn't find, I just made up myself in a word processor or spread sheet program.  My dividers are:

Personal:  All about me.  My schedule, my workouts, my food diary, my prayer list, my spa tasks, everything about me.

Home:  All about the house.  Cleaning, maintenance, yard, garden, etc.

Kitchen:  All about food.  Menus, inventory, grocery lists, etc.

Kids:  Their schedules, chore charts, growth charts, etc.

Pets:  Shot records, vet info, meds, etc.

Husband:  His schedule, chore chart, etc.  ( I doubt this section gets much use!)  :)

Crafts:  Inventory, project list, etc.

Finance:  Budget, bill paying, creditors, etc.

Family:  Friday Fun Night, vacations, events, etc.

Misc:  This is everything else that I didn't really need a separate divider for.  Addresses and phone numbers, passwords, etc.

First of all I am a jotter.  I jot down things quickly and then record them on calendars or lists.  So I attached a small clip board and pad to the front of my binder.

Next I attached a calculator and pen pouch with paper clips, pencil, and fine point sharpies.  

The fine point sharpies are because I laminated all of the printable sheets I printed and the sharpies write on them and erase with a magic eraser.  I didn't want to stop following my binder because I didn't have a page printed or ran out of computer ink or something else.  I know me and I am easily unorganized.  So the laminated sheets keep me from getting behind on being together!

I did buy 2 desk calendars from Walmart that were 8x11 and I punched holes.  I bought 2 because I use one as a master calendar and one for just the kids schedule.  They have their own section in my binder and they like to look at their schedules too!  

I made a second binder just for recipes.  My menu planning has 7 categories.

Meatless Monday
Tex-Mex Tuesday
What's in the Pot Wednesdays
Anything Can Happen Thursdays
Family Fun Night Fridays
Soup Salad and Sandwich Saturdays
 Grilling Sunday

I picked recipes and recipes ideas for each category and put them behind the dividers for each day.  It has really helped me have a variety of food and not get stuck on the same old things.

I also have a section for favorites, desserts, snacks, breakfast, lunch, and side dishes.  If I don't write it down I don't remember.  So I write it down!


I would post links to all the pages I printed but to be honest as I was searching half were broken links and I didn't save any except the ones that were PDF files.  So I can't really put a good list on here.  I will tell you, Kidz Points has some great charts for kids, frugal living at About.com has a good list, and organized household has some good ones too.  Pinterest has links to several but they are hit and miss.

Happy Organizing!