My Home Management Binder

Last year I created my first Home Management Binder to help me stay organized and on top of all my household duties. Want to know how much it helped me and made everything wonderful and perfect? ZERO, zip, nada! It didn't help at all! Now it wasn't the Home Management Binder's fault. It was my fault because I didn't actually use it once I made it.

This year I spent a lot of time making my own personalized pages, so I am making a promise to myself to use it. I really do need it. I work so much better in an organized system than when I'm just running around (like a chicken with my head cut off) trying to figure out what needs to be done right now or can wait until later. Some things end up waiting WAY too long to be done if I do it like that, especially since I tend to just keep putting off chores I don't like to do, like folding laundry or scrubbing the shower.

Home Management Binder's can get very thick and complex if you're not careful (or, if you really want to I guess). I know that I will get overwhelmed if I have too many pages and too many details. Right now I have only a few basic pages in my Home Management binder:

1. An Emergency Information page with emergency phone numbers, contacts, allergy information, etc.
2. A Weekly Planner page for every week to help me with scheduling activities.
3. A Weekly Menu Planner page for every week to help me plan meals and grocery shopping.
4. A Favorite Recipes and Recipes to Try page to help with meal planning. I also print out my favorite recipes from the computer and put them in the binder where I can find them quickly.
5. A Family Finance page which has a simple version of our budget and some financial goals written out. Mr. Fix-it is the one who mostly handles our finances and pays bills, but I like to have the numbers where I can see them too. I also keep a pouch with a few cash envelopes for things like grocery and gas money and a small calculator in this section.
6. An Important Dates page with the birthday's and anniversaries of our family members.
7. A Directory section with contact information for our family, friends, and places we do business with (doctors, insurance agents, utility company, etc.)
8. A Daily Checklist page to help me keep track of which chores I need to get done everyday in order to stay on top of everything. This is my favorite and most important page! Here's what it looks like, if you have eyes like an eagle you might actually be able to read it:

You might notice (if you have those eagle eyes) that I have some form of doing the laundry listed three times in the Daily column. This may seem overkill, but its because I hate doing laundry and I will procrastinate and put it off forever if I don't have a constant reminder to keep on top of it. I have to do about 2 loads of laundry every day in order to not get behind. You also may notice that I have some seemingly silly things like "Bathe kids" a couple times in the Weekly column. This is because if don't remind myself I will forget...sometimes for a couple weeks. I know! Thats gross! But that's why its on there to remind me! The whole Home Management Binder system works much better if you personalize it to your own needs. You might be perfectly able to remember to bathe your children and not need that on your daily checklist.

I encourage any woman who wants to become and more organized keeper of the home to build a Home Management Binder. I have only been using mine for a few short weeks and it is already helping so much! Right now I am not in the place where I am keeping up with everything in my binder perfectly. I am building into it slowly. At least I am using it unlike last year!  Just remember that a Home Management Binder is a tool to help you not a master over you! (More on this another day.)

Do you have a Home Management Binder or other home management system? 
Would you like some more help starting one?