Household Binder

The Household Binder ...

 

I like organization. I like pretty. I like rhythm and flow to my schedule.

Please notice that perfection was not listed.

Perfection is not my strong suit. As much as I try my hand at this, something always goes askew.

Take for instance, the lovely vinyl that I made for our binder. If you were to open it up, you would notice something different. Ken said that the company just put the pockets on upside down and I did nothing wrong.

That's why I married him.

I however, know that sometimes excitement and passion about a project gets in the way of accomplishing perfection.

I know that I could probably just get some transfer paper and make it right. However, I am just going to leave it as a reminder that sometimes things don't always go the way that we plan. So we have to be flexible, much like creating a schedule for your household.

My household binder is full of lists and reminders. Lists of what I have in my pantry, freezer, and stock closet. It has reminders of birthdays, gifts, and what our monthly calendar looks like.

In fact, this month's calendar is on the very first page with next month's calendar behind it. I just went here to print off monthly calendars from now until next July. In our calendar, we have:

• Different appointments
• Family and Friends' Birthdays
• Holidays and important events

  Just the usual stuff. I will not only use this calendar as a visual reminder, but also for planning my menus. I will share my menu/recipe planning tomorrow.

 

Behind my calendars, I have our Weekly Schedule.

 

Now, I live for the weekends so our weekdays are jammed packed with work, household duties, and other events. We just want to have carefree weekends so we work hard for that to happen by completing our household tasks during the week. Here is what that looks like:

 

Sunday: Church, Prep lunches for the week, lay out clothes for the week, blog, get grocery list/coupons ready

Monday: Grocery (Bi-Weekly)

Tuesday: Stay after school

Wednesday: Laundry (there is only two of us!)

Thursday: Cleaning

Friday: Relax

Saturday: Family, Projects, Fun

 

Sundays seem like days where you are finishing up the weekend while preparing for the week! That can be very hectic at times.

 

• I like to put snacks and vegetables in bags, put salads in different storage containers, and lay out five outfits so that I can just grab and go without thinking.
• I like to go ahead and write my blog post for the week and schedule those so they appear on whatever day I choose.
• One of my favorite Sunday morning rituals is to send Tootsie out to get the paper so that I can go through the ads while watching CBS Sunday Morning! This helps with couponing and sales.

 

The rest of the week, I just choose one task to complete each day. Keep in mind, I am very flexible with this. I may get up and start my cleaning, like wiping down counters or mirrors, on Wednesday morning if I know that the rest of the week will be busy or we are headed to Mississippi.

 

I think this is the key to have a schedule: FLEXIBILITY!!!

 

Also, here is our Cleaning and Household Schedule just in case you are curious about what we tackle. When I say we, I mean we. Ken is in charge of the floors and the scrubbing of the shower while I do the other things. He helps me with the fall and spring cleaning. It is good to have your family on board and splitting up the duties. Be creative with this! Growing up, we knew if the BeeGee's record was on, cleaning time it was!

 

Now onto the lists! I am trying them for now just to see how well this will work. I am huge on having things on hand so that I am not constantly visiting the Publix.

 

I don't won't to be the 

 

or where everybody knows my name.  

 

I like to stockpile, which is a couple of steps under hoarding. I don't want to build a basement for my collection of 1,000 tubes of toothpaste. I will just put my three tubes in the stockpile closet and call it a day.

 

Although I have these lists in my notebook,

 

Pantry Inventory

 

Freezer Inventory

Household Inventory

I also put them in my pantry where I placed them in protective plastic and use a dry erase marker to tally.

I like having the dry erase tally marks, so when I get something out of the pantry to use, I can quickly erase a tally mark with my finger.

 I don't want to spend my time counting every can or seeing how much toilet paper I have. I just want to see what I am low on so I can prevent being the

 Of the Publix. So, I think my favorite thing on this board will probably be the "need" list (bottom right).

I also included a Birthday List so I can remember when to send out birthday cards as well as a Gift List.

 

With my birthday list, I purchased some birthday cards for each person. I wrote in them, addressed them, and put them in order according to their birthdays. This took about two hours from start to finish. Each month, I look to see when I need to send them out. I have been doing this since January, and only have missed one person. Sorry, James!

 

With the gift list, I just made a list of people that we normally send gifts to for Christmas and Birthday. I made two columns beside their name, and listed what we normally do along with what we could possible do for Christmas. This helps me to keep an eye out for that perfect gift, sales, and overall good deals.

 

I am not perfect with this, but it works for me for know. I am sure that there will be some adjustments!

Wow, this was a long post! So if you made it this far, please let me know what this post has inspired you to do:

a. I don't know, my head it spinning

b. Clean at least that junk drawer and call it a day

c. Create your own binder

d. Quit reading my blog posts

e. Other ________________

Happy Thursday! Happy Cleaning Day for me! Stay tuned tomorrow for Menu/Recipe Planning!