How to Make a Home Management Binder

Whew! I can't believe that I finally got this project started! I'm really excited about starting my home management binder because I think it will be a great resource for our family and for myself while running our household. When I first started staying home full time with Andy I did a lot of reading on some of my favorite blogs about running a household, daily schedules and how other Mom's keep up with it all and keep track of it all! I found the common thread among many to be some kind of family management book. I brought as much with me as I could on this trip to get my binder started, but there is still a lot of information I want to add once I get home next week. I know that eventually this book will become filled with a lot more tabs and a lot more information, but here is what I did to just get started.

1) I purchased a 1" presentation binder (so that I could make my own cover), divider tabs and a package of page protectors

2) I decided on the following tabbed sections for my binder:

Daily Chores - I have a list of all of my daily chores & my daily laundry schedule

Weekly Chores - I have a list of all of my weekly chores divided by day. For example, on Mondays I clean bathrooms and file paperwork, on Fridays I dust, etc.

Birthdays - I have a list of all friend & family birthdays separated by month

Finances - I have a page that lists all of our monthly bills by category. I still need to add a calendar that shows the bills on the day of the month that each is due and I also need to list where I pay each bill (online, through Bank of America Bill Pay, mail, etc.) Since I take care of paying the bills, I want to make it as easy as possible for my husband to take over if something should ever happen to me.

Menu Planning - I don't have anything in this section yet, but my intention is to create monthly menus with shopping lists that I can rotate through. My initial goal is to have three monthly menus. That is going on my list for February.

Andrew - I don't have anything in this section yet, either, because everything is at home, but I will keep copies (not originals) of his medical records, birth certificate, a list of known allergies (which as of now is just amoxicillin) and his pediatrician information

Pet Records - We have 3 dogs and 1 cat, so I will keep copies of their current vaccination records and rabies certificates here.

Contacts - In this section I have a list of all of our immediate family members' phone numbers. I still need to add a list of other important and frequently used numbers.

If you are just starting out making your own binder, you may have other categories to add such as school schedules or children's extra curricular activities schedules, etc. For our family, this is a good starting point. Sometimes it's hard to think that I have been married for four and a half years and I am just now putting something like this together, but I was too focused on other things before to really think about running a more organized household.

Okay, so I can now cross off starting a home management binder and making a birthday list! Fantastic! Oh, and in an effort of full disclosure, I'm swapping out 'making wipes solution' from my January list with 'clean out key chain' from my February list. I can't make up the wipes solution until I get home! I can not BELIEVE that there is only one more day left in this month and I will have accomplished 31 things!! (well, really only 30 because I passed off brushing the dogs for a week to my husband while I am gone! ha ha) It's a really good feeling to have come so far in a month and I'm excited to keep it up!