A Tour of my Home Management Binder

If you were to walk into my house right now, you’d probably die of shock. It’s not at all tidy – there are dishes in the sink, the floors are cluttered, the bathrooms need doing and I need to have another conversation with my 8yo and 6yo sons about the necessity of lifting the toilet seat and actually opening their eyes while peeing in that “I’ve just woken up” phase in the morning. The girls in this family know to look before we sit down!

Those that know me well will attest to the fact that I am far from a natural housekeeper. In fact, I’m pretty darn ordinary. I never learned to love that particular part of my role at home and so I avoid it whenever possible. Despite this, I like the feeling I get when I’ve decluttered a little, or when I’ve completed a task of some sort. I just have trouble with the “It’s messy AGAIN!” part :)

Several years ago, I stumbled across Flylady and spent quite a bit of time immersing myself in her approach – Routines, Weekly Home Blessing, Control Journal, Yahoo groups, email reminders, the works. While some of the basic principles have stuck, I just stopped being as motivated and unsubscribed. Plus, the name ‘Control Journal’ seemed restrictive somehow. Then one lazy afternoon, after happily following the internet’s equivalent of the Yellow Brick Road (has anyone gone on a ‘link treasure hunt’ lately? Great fun :) I came across the Keeping The Home site. Those already familiar with Keeping The Home and Flylady will probably notice the Home Management Binder is essentially the same thing as a Control Journal – call it semantics, but I still think “Home Management Binder” rolls off the tongue more smoothly. Plus, on a personal level, I’m a work on progress! I’m always striving for Management but I’m almost never in Control :)

It’s strangely voyeuristic, but I enjoy reading about how other people have set up their Home Management Binders, taking a peek at the photos they post and of course mucking around with my own. In describing my latest Binder attempt to others, I’ve been accused of being a perfectionist – they’re probably right, to a degree! To me, function and prettiness don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I pay attention to things others think are irrelevant – borders, graphics, arranging the text on the page and so on. If it doesn’t ‘feel’ right, I fiddle with it until it does. That’s just part of my personality. I’ll always be aesthetics-oriented :) Plus, I enjoy tweaking and fiddling with spreadsheets and templates on the computer and consider it almost a ‘craft’. In my defence, it’s a lot less expensive than scrapbooking!

So in the spirit of peeking over your neighbour’s fence, I give you my own effort…

(Please note: If you don't already have a cup of tea and some choccie biscuits, now is the time to go and get them. This post is enormous. I thought about dividing it into two or three parts, but decided against it, LOL)

COVER

This is the front cover of my Binder. The rose paper comes from a once-started-never-finished scrapbooking endeavour :) The Binder itself is a standard 2 inch, 4 ring, clear cover type. The back is covered with the same rose paper.

A shot of the spine. I used some of the trimmings from the front.

A close up showing the index tabs. I couldn’t find a set of binder dividers that extended past the edge of the paper (don’t ask me why!) and then I came across the individual stick on ones. The labels kept slipping out of the sides though, so I had to tape each end shut.

INSIDE

The first page as you open the Binder is a blog entry I printed out from Lady Lydia’s Homeliving Helper called Organising For Success. It struck such a chord with me that I put it permanently in the front of the Binder. It is the first thing I read (in theory!) before moving on to my Routines, and I try to read it each day. This spot in the Binder will change periodically – just whatever essay or article I really identify with at any given time.

ROUTINES

This is an example of a title page I use for my categories. As you can see from the number of tabs, I have a lot! They all share the same font and flower divider, but the picture changes with each category.

Over the page are my actual Routines. I have four – Morning, Mid-Morning, Afternoon and Evening.

Morning Routine
(starts as soon as we’re up)

1. Run washing machine (which has been preloaded the night before)
2. Kids’ breakfast
3. Finish lunches (I premake sandwiches the night before and freeze them, so this is
usually just a case of throwing everything in the lunchboxes)
4. J dressed – bus
5. Unload / reload dishwasher
6. B and M dressed
7. Dress to shoes (some elements and terminology of Flylady are hard to shake!)
8. School run
9. Breakfast & Think About Today

If things run smoothly I generally have enough time to have breakfast in between J getting on the bus and B and M needing to get dressed, but I usually prefer to just sip a cup of tea while doing the school preparation and have a quieter, calmer breakfast when I return from the school run. Doing it this way also gives me more time to look over my ToDo list for that day.

Mid-Morning Routine
(starts at around 10:00am)

1. Morning tea
2. What’s For Dinner?
3. Reboot laundry (hang, swap loads, run dryer – whatever needs doing)
4. Kitchen Patrol
5. General tidy (the main living areas usually need a pick up after the madness of school prep)
6. Make beds
7. Lay out after-school clothes
8. Hotspot

My kitchen is a raging hotspot 95% of the time and I’ve found a reminder to check for crusty cereal bowls, wipe benches and put things away is generally warranted :)

Afternoon Routine
(as soon as we walk in the door after the school run)

1. Change into after-school clothes
2. Afternoon tea
3. Unpack / repack bags (deal with school paperwork straight away)
4. Kids’ Reading Time
5. Fold / iron clothes (I try – though I usually fail! – to spend 30mins a day on this)
6. Hotspot

Evening Routine
(as soon as dinner is finished)

1. Clear away dinner dishes
2. Load & run dishwasher
3. Kitchen Patrol
4. General tidy
5. Quick sweep
6. Lay out clothes for tomorrow
7. Double-check bags
8. Semi-pack lunches (make and freeze sandwiches, lay out everything else)
9. Load washing machine
10. Cuppa & Think About Tomorrow

My kids have their own Routines as well. We have a copy of this posted permanently to the pantry door, but it is handy having a copy of it in the Binder as well.

Kids’ Morning Routine
(done concurrently with Mummy’s)

1. Wake up! (yes, they sometimes need a reminder to do this! :)
2. Eat breakfast
3. Brush your teeth
4. Wash your face
5. Take off your pyjamas (put them in your sock drawer)
6. Get dressed
7. Put on your shoes (with Mum’s help)
8. Watch TV quietly in the loungeroom

Kids’ Afternoon Routine
(done concurrently with Mummy’s)

1. Take off your school shoes (line them up near the front door)
2. Take off your school clothes (give them to Mum)
3. Get dressed in your after-school clothes
4. Bring Mum your lunchbox, drink bottle and folder
5. Afternoon tea
6. Reading Time
7. Computer Time – 20 mins each (Mum will set the timer!)

Kids’ Bedtime Routine
(done concurrently with Mummy’s)

1. Eat dinner
2. Bring your plate to the bench
3. Play quietly until Mum calls you
4. Brush your teeth
5. Take off your after-school clothes (give them to Mum)
6. Put on your pyjamas (remember they are in your sock drawer!)
7. Tuck in. Goodnight!

As you can see, all of these Routines are mostly geared toward school days – on days that we are home we just skip over or modify the things we need to do, as we go along.

This shows a projected Basic Daily Schedule for 2007 – morning on the left, afternoon on the right. It came about when I sat down and made a list of all the things I wanted to achieve or change about my schedule in 2007 – walk more regularly, spend time in each of my kids’ classrooms (my baby is starting school next year – sigh!), study, housework, kids’ stuff, Mum’s Down Time etc. I couldn’t quite visualise in my head how I was going to be able to find time for all of those things, so I began scratching out a loose schedule for next year. Even though I’ve included times, nine times out of ten they’ll be ignored on purpose in favour of just having a basic guideline to follow.

BASIC WEEKLY PLAN

One of the main differences between Flylady’s approach and the one I use is that while she works on one room or area per week (eventually cycling through all five zones every five weeks), I prefer to assign each day of the week two or three rooms. I’ve timed myself and I can accomplish what needs to be done on any given day in about 1½ hours of solid effort. No, this is not always deep cleaning, but is a level of cleanliness that works for my family. Every few weeks I’ll deep clean a room as part of my Saturday morning Home Project hour (more about that later :) but for now, this works for us.

The picture above shows my plan for Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday

Weekly Yard Blessing
Home Project – 1 hour
Misc Laundry (change and wash sheets, school uniforms, work uniforms, towels)

Sunday

Baking Day
Pamper Day (bubble bath, TV catch up, etc)
Set aside Returnables (library books, borrowed items, Goodwill donations)

On second thoughts, this probably isn’t as clear a reflection of a day’s housework, as none of the ten main rooms are done on the weekend. A better example would be:

Wednesday

Kitchen
Family Room
Desk Day (pay bills, file paid bills, phone calls, menu planning, grocery list, computer back-ups, file receipts, price book)


MENU PLANNING

The next section in my Binder is Menu Planning. The first page in this section (not pictured) is my Master Grocery List. I have 26 categories of food and other household goods that I buy – Meat, Dairy, Breads, Toiletries…right through to Chemist (Non-Prescription) and Stationery. Everything I buy on a semi-regular basis is added to the list and it also forms the basis of my Price Book section (coming up later!)

In the above picture you can see my 8 Week Menu Plan. Most meals are repeated in the second four weeks, with a few minor variations (for example, there might be Chicken Schnitzel in Week 1 and Chicken Parmigiana in the corresponding spot in Week 5 – the difference simply being the addition of some meatless spaghetti sauce and some cheese).

For menu planning, I tend to follow a general rule of thumb:

Thursday – Fish
Friday – Beef
Saturday – Chicken
Sunday – Frugal / Misc
Monday – Pasta
Tuesday – Crumbed Chicken (homecrumbed!)
Wednesday – Frugal / Vegetarian / Soup

It makes figuring out what to slot in very easy. As you can see in the picture, I still have some spots to fill (it’s a work in progress :) There’s also room for Takeaway once a month and spots for New Recipes to try out.

PRICE BOOK

This picture shows the layout of my Price Book section. I’ve tried quite a few ways of tracking prices, including the last attempt of an A5 ‘mini me’ binder and hundreds and hundreds of pages (one page per item!). It got quite ridiculous and the amount of paper and ink I wasted was horrendous. The above example shows one page per category, rather than one page per item, so the whole thing is reduced to 26 pages in the (normal sized) Binder. Much more manageable. Down the left I list the ingredients or other household items I buy regularly. Across the top, the column headings are:

Brand
Size
Price
Unit Price
Store
Date
Reg Price (non sale)
Max Price to Pay

The first six columns are fairly standard things to track, but I included the last two columns because they are important to the way I shop. I like to know if the base price is rising, and in the event of needing something that isn’t on ‘the best sale’ that week, I like to set a maximum price I’m willing to pay. For example, I know that every few weeks our brand of toilet paper goes on sale for 38c per roll. It’s regular price is more like 55c per roll. Occasionally I miscalculate how much I need of something to last me until the next great sale and need to buy it again. I try to never pay the regular price for anything, but I generally set the ‘max price’ at about halfway between the best sale price I can get regularly, and the regular non-sale price. That way, I may not be getting it as cheaply as I have in the past, but I feel okay knowing at least I’m not paying full price. I hope that explanation made a moderate amount of sense! :)

This approach is somewhat restrictive in that I cannot have a ‘recent activity’ summary of any given item as I would if I used a ‘one item per page’ approach, but what it lacks in detail, it makes up in compactibility. And the other important information is still there.


CALENDARS



Next up is my Calendars section. In the picture above you can see a simple calendar for 2006 on the left, and one for 2007 on the right, printed from Donna Young’s site. You can see a note I made next to September to remind me to have my annual checkup. The 2006 calendar will be scrapped in a couple of weeks. The idea being that a new calendar is printed in December of each year and all reoccurring events are transferred over to the new one.

Over the page (no picture) is a one page ‘birthday calendar’ I printed off the Hallmark website. I use this one solely to record family and friend’s birthdays. I also make sure to note how old they will be – for example, Fred (35). If you have lots of young kids in your family or circle of friends, this is especially important. I’ve sent out several wrong-aged birthday cards in my time!


CLEANING



The first page in this section is dedicated to my Weekly Home and Weekly Yard Blessings.

Weekly Home Blessing
(done Mondays)

1. Dust
2. Vacuum – main living areas and bedrooms
3. Mop – main living areas and bathrooms
4. Mirrors
5. Fingerprint Patrol (doorframes and doorknobs are sticky finger MAGNETS :)
6. Empty bins

(In the picture you can see the ‘Change Sheets’ item still listed – I’ve since moved this to Saturdays as part of my Misc Laundry session)

Weekly Yard Blessing
(done Saturdays)

1. General tidy – front and back
2. Mow lawns – front and back (if needed)
3. Trim edges – front and back (if needed)
4. Sweep paths
5. Pull weeds – 15 mins
6. Prune – 15 mins
7. Clear away cobwebs – verandah and pergola areas
8. Wipe down outdoor furniture
9. Refill bird feeder and bird bath (currently a Pyrex dish!)

I need to add a tenth item – top up outdoor pest control (Ant Sand, barrier spray etc). We’ve been having a lot of ant invasions with the warmer weather and we need to keep on top of this. Last week I discovered a colony in residence in my walk in robe, feasting merrily on the groceries I was storing for Christmas. Yuk.




This is an example of how I set out my Detailed Cleaning Lists. In this case, it’s Main Bathroom and Ensuite on the left and Laundry on the right. I try to group like rooms on the same day – these are all ‘wet’ areas and are done on Tuesdays. I’ve already got the mop and cleaning gear out – might as well do all the jobs that require those things.

For interest’s sake, here’s a list of the rooms in my house:

Main Bedroom & Robe
Bedroom 2
Bedroom 3
Bedroom 4
Main Bathroom
Ensuite
Laundry
Kitchen
Family Room
Loungeroom
Entrance & Hall


CHILDREN




This page details the usual diet of my kids. It’s more for the benefit of others who might have to take care of them at short notice, like grandparents or babysitters. Daddy also uses it as a ‘cheat sheet’ for filling lunchboxes – for me, its automatic, for him, not yet!


FINANCIAL

I just have the one page in here at present (no photo though) listing all of our household expenses from the mortgage right through to DVD rental and a small budget for school sausage sizzles :) We listed absolutely everything we could possibly spend money on in a given year.

I have plans at some point to include a few self-made spreadsheets detailing household expenditure across all of these categories but that’s quite a big chunk to bite off, so I’ll leave that one for now!


PEOPLE

At the moment the only page I have here is a Family Yellow Pages printable courtesy of Organized Home's Household Notebook. It’s a simple one-page span of all our most frequently called numbers from family and friends, through to doctors and service people.


HOME PROJECTS

Occasionally a task will pop up that fits nowhere else in my regular housework rotation, or it is a long term ‘take a bite here and there’ kind of task. I keep a running list of such items and put aside up to an hour each Saturday (while the Misc Washing loads are cycling through :) to jump in and do something from the list. Current ideas floating around are:

Put photos into albums
Declutter Bedroom 4 (currently a gym room/storeroom)
Organise clothing in walk-in-robe
Rip recipes to try out of magazines
Add keeper recipes to the Family Cookbook (more about that shortly!)
Weed out old toys and clothes for donation
Reorganise filing cabinet
Sort out linen cupboard
Wash sliding doors
Wash windows
Declutter kitchen cupboards
Reorganise pantry
Extra weeding/yardwork


WEIGHT LOSS




Currently, I am off the wagon – ahem! But when I’m ‘on track’ I use these two self-made spreadsheets to track my progress. On the left is my Weight Record. It’s designed to track over a 12 week period. Days of the week are across the top (I ‘start’ my week on Thursdays, the day I grocery shop). The small box at the bottom shows a ‘total lost’ over the 12 weeks. On the right is my Measurements spreadsheet, designed to compliment the Weight Record. Down the side (or across the bottom, depending on your perspective :) I list the areas I track – Calf, Above Knee, Thigh, Hip, Waist, Bust, Chest, Arm. There are 8 columns in total. One to record the starting measurements, six to track my progress (every 2 weeks) and the last to track ‘total lost’ over the whole 12 weeks.


PERSONAL

Every now and then I find something – an article, clipping or similar – that has nothing to do with homemaking and want to keep it. This is the spot for it. At the moment I have information about short courses, a list of personal goals, documents pertaining to family matters, and personal correspondence.


STUDY

I am three years into a four year part time course. It has been a LONG three years! :) In this section I have an Assignment Time Line showing the breakdown of how I approach each assignment – read the unit, take notes, re-write assignment in own words, work through harder sections first – and so on. It helps…when I remember to refer to it!


CRAFT

I get sporadic urges to craft (*grin*). I think it’s deep in my genetic code somewhere. The problem with this is that I almost never have the time to sit and ‘do’ a craft. When the urge does strike, I tend not to be prepared and get sucked into the vortex that is the internet, searching for the ‘right’ thing to make according to the mood I’m in at the time. I know, its ridiculous. So I now print out things as I see them on my cyber-travels. When I get the urge to be creative, I just flick through this section as opposed to trawling the entire web :) At the moment (being the Christmas season and all) I have instructions for easy fabric gift bags, and various ornaments. At this rate I might actually get one or two done by next Christmas!


CHRISTMAS




This section encompasses all things Christmassey :) Ideas on gifts, decorations, Christmas recipes, and so on. The above picture is of my Master Gift List (not filled out, *grin*). The column headings are: Name, Gift Ideas, Make?, Bought?, Wrapped?, Tagged?, Mailed?, Sale? and Cost? As I get ideas throughout the coming year, I’ll jot them down. Then maybe I’ll be calmer for Christmas 2007 :)


INSPIRATION

My eldest son is special needs, and I’ve gained an enormous amount of comfort from the various essays I come across on the internet. One of the best sources I’ve found is MountainWings. Be sure to check out their Favourite Past Issues (bottom of the page – Page 1 and Page 2). Even coming at it from a non-religious viewpoint, I’ve found so much inspiration in these stories. My absolute favourite is “Shay”. Years later and I still cry at this one :)

At the moment I probably have about a dozen essays and articles in here that I’m particularly close to. To me, reading these essays is like listening to your favourite uplifting (or sad!) song – very cathartic.


ARTICLES

I’m always coming across articles about homemaking that hit home. Lady Lydia’s Organising For Success is a good example, and it will eventually move from the front of my Binder into this section. I like to print things out :) We buy a LOT of printer paper in this house!


ONCE A MONTH COOKING

I have the distinct misfortune of regularly battling the Too Many Eggs in the Basket Syndrome (*grin*). I cycle through Pet Projects and interests and I like to dabble in lots of different areas of interest in any given week. However, as you can imagine, this leads to a lot of problems. OAMC is one of those Eggs I’d like to be able to keep permanently in my basket but I keep putting it aside for other Eggs I’ve prioritised higher! I’ve read and dabbled in various methods of OAMC but nothing really addressed my “too many Eggs, not enough baskets!” issues until I read about Lynn Nelson’s Busy Cooks Pyramid approach. I plan to try out this system during January in preparation for the new school year.

This is also the section I keep bulk recipes.


MISC

Exactly as the name suggests, this is the ‘overflow’ section. At the moment I have most things neatly categorised (with the amount of sections I have in my Binder, I’d better have!) but occasionally there’ll be things that just don’t fit elsewhere. At the moment I have a couple of lists – one of DVDs I’d like to rent (updated and crossed off as I go along) and one of DVDs I’d like to add to my collection.


BONUS PICTURES – FAMILY COOKBOOK

I recently set up a Family Cookbook for our keeper recipes. I’d been handwriting them into a spiral bound notebook but decided to create something more permanent and hardwearing by recycling one of the A5 binders from my previous attempt at a Price Book. It was perfect.

The scrap of paper is there for security purposes! :) I used some more offcuts from old scrapbooking projects, with the back cover being the same deep pink.




A shot of the spine.




An example of how the title pages look. On the left I have a pocket where I slip in recipes to try out. The Pancakes recipe comes courtesy of Hillbilly Housewife.

Sections in my Family Cookbook include:

Mains – Beef
Mains – Chicken
Mains – Misc
Cakes, Muffins & Slices
Biscuits
Light Meals
Snacks
Side Dishes
Misc
Special Occasions
Breakfasts
Non-Food

Here’s an example of how I’ve typed up each recipe. The good thing about having individual sheets (as opposed to a whole notebook) is that I can remove each recipe as needed and simply magnet it to the fridge while I’m cooking.

And there you have it….

The Home Management Binder is constantly evolving – this is really just a snapshot of how it looks at the moment. But it was great fun to set up and it honestly does make life a whole lot easier. I lay mine out on the end of the dining room table ready to open in the morning - I work through my Routines with a cup of tea in one hand and a hairbrush in the other :) I’d be lying if I said I don’t have regular slip-ups and hiccups (*grin*) but just looking at the Binder sitting there on the table does wonders.

Cheers,
Lizzie