While hanging out on one of my regular sites, the topic of Home Management Binders was brought up again since we’re beginning a new calendar year and everyone is in a mad rush to get organized. For this household, a Home Management Binder would probably throw us into more chaos than not since I’ve been able to wonderfully keep things flowing with the calendar and organization system I have set up in the home office area of our kitchen. One area that we do need some management on is the household projects.
As anyone who owns an older house will admit to, there are always projects that need tending, budgeting, and researching. Since that list is ever growing, it’s easy for projects to get lost in the background, not to mention feel over whelmed trying to figure out how to afford it all. In order to get a handle on all this mess, I took a good chunk of time out of a Saturday afternoon to organize it all.
I armed myself with an unused binder filled with notebook paper, plain computer paper, a pen, hole puncher, hole reinforcement, and divider tabs.
I decided for the purpose of this binder that things would be color coded in order to make life easier. Each color tab was given a special meaning and then a key was created and posted on the inside of the binder.
(I tried to match the colors for the holes as well, but ran out.)
Yellow = Downstairs
Blue = Bathrooms
White = Upstairs
Green = Outdoors
Red = “Full House” (These are projects that have to do with a larger portion of the house than just one room.)
Each divider has the name of the project written on it followed by a sheet to record goals (what the project will accomplish), objectives (steps to reach the goal), and estimated costs. As we come across articles, estimates, schematics, and other pieces of information that are pertinent to certain projects, we will add those in behind the specific dividers. These projects range in scale and difficulty from painting the bathrooms to regrading close to three quarters of our basement floor.
This binder now lives in the bottom of our filing cabinet in the home office area. It’s located right where our other important binders are and will hopefully become just as much a staple resource as the others.
For those that are interested in learning more about Home Management Binders in any form, please visit the following links:
Little House in the Suburbs Home Management Notebook – Steps 1 through 7
Certified Housewife Homemaking Binder
Organized Home Printable Pages For Your Household Notebook
With the Fruit of Her Hands Household Notebooks Made Beautiful
