Creating a Household Notebook

Have you ever felt totally disorganized.  Things are not getting done, meals aren't happening,  laundry's dirty, house is a mess.  When this happens I feel out of sorts, lacking energy, and just not good about life.  So this month I'm on a mission to get clean and organized.

So today my project was to put together a Household Notebook.  A Household Notebook puts all your "stuff" together in one place.  Your ideas, plans, goals, information, routines.  All that stuff that's floating around either on your desk or in your head.  And you can put anything you want into your Household Notebook.  Whatever helps you to get your life together.

My categories may not be the same as yours.  And mine may change as I use it.  I may need to add something or maybe combine some things.  That's the nice thing about using a binder.  They are easy to change.  Here are the categories that I put in mine Notebook to start with.

Routines: I'm still working on this one this week.

Lists:  This is just a place for all of my lists.  Things to do now or in the future.  Ideas.  Lists of whatever.  I'm a list person and seem to have a lot of them.

Cleaning:  This is a place for cleaning lists.  I have my Shaklee cleaning pages and some Martha Stewart Cleaning Checklists.

Goals:  This is where I write out some of my monthly goals.

Meal Planning:  This is where I have any meal planning things that might be helpful along with meals plans.  This is something I really need to work on.

Health & Fitness:  Any information on Health & Fitness. Eating right. Exercises. Stuff like that.

Home Maintenance:  Some more Martha Stewart Checklists and some forms for home and car maintenance.

Gardening:  Here I have some monthly information from OSU Extension Service.  This is also where I'll put garden info once Spring gets here and I'm able to start planting.

Blogging:  Here I have blogging stuff.  Ideas, info,etc.

Homeschool:  Homeschool forms, ideas, contacts.

Financial:  This is just for account and policy info.  I have another binder that I use for Bill Paying.

Medical Info:  This is for insurance, doctor, and medication info.

Internet:  This is for websites, usernames, and passwords.

There is quite a bit of stuff.  Some gets used more often than others.  But it's handy to have it all in one place.  I also have file cabinet for permanent storage stuff. A Household Notebook is for info and often used stuff.  And it's fairly large so it is not meant to leave the house.  That would be where a planner would work.

Here are some of the websites I've used for forms.

Life...Your Way  A lot of really great printables for just about everything.
Martha Stewart  Need I say more.

My next steps are to write out my routines,  fill out forms, and work on meal planning. 

Organizing Make up

 I don't wear a lot of makeup, but I do wear some.  I love the Bare Escentuals Mineral makeup.  It's not real heavy, but it has enough coverage.  As I'm getting older I realize that I can't cover everything and still have my skin look natural.  I also have a bit of rosacea and the Mineral makeup doesn't seem to aggravate it.  

But one thing I don't like about the BE Mineral makeup is that the labels are on the bottom of the jar.  You can't tell which jar is the right one without picking it up and looking on the bottom only to find that it's not the one you wanted.  I find myself always picking up the wrong one.  

So I finally decided to get out my label maker and fix the problem.  The top drawer is where I keep my BE Minerals.  In the morning I just pull out the whole drawer while I'm using it.

 Now my routine is quicker and less aggravating in the morning.  Always a good thing.

Pantry Clean Up

Today my daughter, Jessica and I worked on cleaning and organizing our pantry.  We have a walk in pantry right around the corner from the kitchen.

When we first bought the house, the former owner was using this room for a small office.  So I just had it in my head that it was an office and that's how we first used it.  When we replaced some of the carpeting it got recarpeted.  But after a while I realized it wasn't a very good office.  It was pretty small and had only one tiny window.

So I got the brilliant idea to change it into a pantry.  It's right off the kitchen and plenty big enough for a walk in pantry.  It's pretty much a hodge podge of shelves and stuff that we had around the house and garage.  So it isn't pretty.

Someday I want to remove the carpet (who has carpet in a pantry?) and put built in shelving all the way around the room.  Someday it will look really nice.  Right now it's very functional.  And cleaner and more organized than it was yesterday.  So here it is before we tackled it.

 

And here it is after.

Yea, I know, I have a lot of small appliances.  But with all this room I can have a lot of small appliances and still have room for food.  I'm so used to having a lot of room I don't know what I would do without it. So, yes my pantry isn't very pretty, but I love it.

 

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Homestead Barn Hop