Home Management Notebook

I’ve been reading Simple Mom for a while now. It’s such a great blog. In fact,  I enjoy the blog so much, I bought her book: Organized Simplicity. One of the chapters in OS is on making a “home management notebook”.

What’s that, you say? Sounds nerdy. If by nerdy you mean awesome, than yes.

I’m not going to give you a step-by-step of how to make your own, since Tsh at Simple Mom does such a great job of doing so. However, I am going to talk about how I made mine, what things I decided to keep in it, and what works for me. I’m also going to include a lot of links!

Choosing the book

I chose a three-ring binder because I had an extra one collecting dust from grad school days and I wanted something large enough to hold all my ideas (ha!, as if anything could hold all the scary contents of this brain!).

After leaving it plain, white, and boring for two weeks and promptly ignoring it, I realized a truth: I like pretty things. If there is something ugly in my house, even if super-functional, I will go out of my way to ignore it’s existence, until I can’t take it anymore and throw it away in a fiery fit.

Time to Decorate

One afternoon when Maggie was napping, I made some tea and settled down to flip through a stack of old magazines (Better Homes and Gardens, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living) and rip out photos of images or captions that inspired me. “Pie for Dinner” was the first one I chose, of course.

I used two pieces of plain scrapbook paper, and glued the photos and captions I chose in a collage, one for each side of the notebook.

So, What’s Inside?

Inside the binder I put the following things, with tab dividers, inside of plastic sleeves:

1. Daily schedule and list of important tasks to accomplish. Simple Mom has a wonderful FREE downloadable “daily docket” as she calls it. It’s a great page for keeping track of daily goals, schedule, and most important tasks.

2.  Monthly Calendar. You can either print out a blank calendar and fill in yourself, or if you use Google calendar, you can print them out and add them into the book.

3. Cleaning Checklist. Again, this is a FREE download from Simple Mom. It has an ex-haustive weekly cleaning list. As in, I never do all of it. Ever. But it’s nice to have a master list, as I try to rotate certain things, like windows and dusting, to every other week or so. It also includes a daily and monthly short list of cleaning tasks.

4. Grocery Lists. I use two, ok, three grocery lists. One for our farmer’s market (where we try to get most of our produce in the summer, and where we still get eggs and meat in the winter), one for the local grocery, and one for Whole Foods (where we shop every so often for specialty items and some meats). For our normal grocery trips, I use a download (link) from Simple Mom. For the others, I made my own printed lists using the same idea. I do four to a page, with a list of the usual items we get.

I keep my menu planning ideas on a magnetic menu planner that sticks to the fridge. It’s pretty great and cost $1 at Michael’s Crafts. If I didn’t have that, I would keep my menu planning info in the binder.

5. Important Phone Numbers and website log-ins.

6. Holiday. I keep a list of birthdays, anniversaries, and other important family milestones. I also have a sheet for keeping track of holiday gift ideas, decor ideas, and a b-u-d-g-e-t. Simple Mom (I know, I know) has a good holiday planning sheet that I used to base my own on.

7. Blog ideas. I liked the idea of having a spot to jot down ideas for posts, to make outlines and to keep track of all things blog related. Before I used a lot of post-it notes and random journals which I would put down and lose track of. I’m sure none of you have ever done anything like that. Now I re-use daily docket sheets by using the other side to keep track of blog ideas.

8. Things Worth Keeping. In this section I have articles, ideas, and organization tips torn from magazines or printed out from the Internet. Things I want to have around, but which would otherwise not have a home. A holiday prep check-list. Kitchen de-cluttering guide. Beautiful table settings and playrooms that make me drool. It’s like Pinterest, but I can touch it.

What’s Not Inside?

Our budget and bills. We actually have a separate financial notebook for all of our bills to be paid, receipts, and tithe/charity info. It also houses our stamps and labels in an old binder pencil-case. I decided it would have been too much to try and combine everything in that notebook into the home management book. However, it works wonderfully for many people to have the budget and bills be part of the HMN. It’s all about what works best for your family.

Coupons. We keep the coupons in a coupon file in the kitchen. Some of those crazy coupon people have their own binder just for coupons! Oh, the insanity!

I think that’s all. I’m pretty scatter-brained if left to my own devices, so it’s been helpful to have all my home-making things in one spot. It doesn’t guarantee I do them, mind you, but it certainly ups the odds.

I hope you’ve found this helpful, and I’d love to know any ideas or tips you all have for what’s worked in your homemaking binder.

Other Links for Homemaking Notebook:

Home Management Notebooks Are A Great Idea  — Simple Mom

Making A Household Notebook Work For You — Simple Mom

Tutorial on Visual Homemaking Journal — Ann Voskamp