The notebook!

My first inspiration for organizing my home would be my amazing friend Gina.  She's such an amazing friend! And is my role model in so many areas!  When I grow up I want to be like her :)  Two years ago I had the wonderful pleasure of visiting her home and getting to see her notebook in person.  I love anything that has to do with organizing and her notebook seriously inspired me.  So I slowly started creating my own notebook but not very seriously.  But now with an (almost) 1 year old and another baby soon to be here I've felt the need to really get my home organized.  I tried finding a "mom planner" that was already made but couldn't find anything quite like I wanted.  Nothing about my notebook is very original.  I've just scoured the internet looking for what I could adjust to fit our family.  Because my husband is a designer I have, of course, adjusted all the forms I've found.  And because of him I see all the little imperfection in my forms, but it's good enough for me to work with and even share, because unless you are a design nerd you won't even see the flaws :)

First credit where credit is due
flylady.net -  For me all the emails are overwhelming.  But the principles are fabulous! Daily routines, cleaning zones, encouragement, and baby steps for how to create the  "Control Journal" (aka home notebook).  What more could you ask for?
life.yourway.net - I am seriously in love with this website right now!  It's a set of blogs about life.  One of the blogs is about organizing.  They have free forms to use in your notebook.  You can download the one at a time for free.  Or pay $7 to download all the forms they've made, plus you'll get email updates when they add more.  I ended up looking at all of their site and downloaded them one at a time.  But if I had to do it all over again I probably would have spent that $7 just for the ease of having all the forms in one spot instead of hunting them down.  And they are GREAT forms!

Last disclaimer - I haven't finished all the forms so I don't have pictures of all of them and I'm not sure that everything is going to stay in this order.  As I use this I may rearrange or add new forms.

Now! The binder!

The first page will be our Family Mission Statement (currently being written)
Section 1 - Personal
Prayer List, Journal, and Personal, Marriage, Parenting, and Family Goals
Prayer List:

The journal is just a lined paged for any prayers or other things.

I haven't finished the goals forms yet.

Section 2 - Calendar

Weekly Overview, Daily Routines, Monthly Calendar, Monthly To-do, Remaining Months, Overview of Birthdays/Anniversaries

Weekly Overview:

I have a place for any apointments that week, then the weekly meal plan.  I only left space for 3 breakfasts and lunches because I figured I'd repeat those.  And only 5 dinners because we do leftovers about twice a week. Grocery list and the week's to do list.

Daily Routines:

I just printed the morning, afternoon, and before bed routines (personalized) from The Flylady's site.

Monthly Calendar:

Just your basic calendar.  All sorts of places you can get them.  Last year I bought a cheap year calendar at the dollar store.  This time I printed my own.  The calendar I used was from organizing.yourway.net  but I know that Word has a calendar template you could print off too.

Monthly To-do List:

Again, from organizing.yourway.net

Birthday/Anniversary Overview

organizing.yourway.net

Section 3 - Food
Monthly Meal Plan, List of Go-to Meals, List of Pantry Staples
Meal Plan:  I try to meal plan for the month.  Usually it ends up being about 2 weeks at a time.  But I just use a normal calendar page.  Hopefully Zeke will start eating table food soon (a whole different post on that struggle) and I'll start really planning lunches.
List of Go-to Meals & Pantry Staples:  Exactly what it sounds like.  The list of meals is to help me meal plan and the pantry staples are for when I go brain dead before grocery shopping, or if, for some reason, I won't be able to make the grocery list and go shopping Joe has a reference point.

Section 4 - Household
Basic Weekly Cleaning/Errands Schedule, Detailed Cleaning List, Vehicle Maintenance Log
Weekly Schedule & Cleaning List: Personalized from The Fly Lady's list and zones
Vehicle Maintenance Log:  I told Joe he is responsible for making that form since I'm not 100% on everything that should be on there.  I want it to be a form that will help both of us keep track of what needs to be done and when.

Section 5 - Finance
Monthly Budget, Basic Budget, Needs and Wants List
Budgets:  We use Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace budget forms (if you haven't heard of Dave Ramsey or FPU please ask me about it!  It seriously changed our mindset on money, savings, budget, etc.  We gained so many tools for personal finance!)  I have a monthly budget and a basic budget because well each months needs are different and if I have a basic budget to work off of it makes creating the current months budget much easier.
Needs and Wants List:

To list what each of us needs or wants from small to big.  That way I can budget them in and not forget that when my husband says "Hey I'm going to need a new pair of jeans for work soon" to budget it in the next check :)  I made a page for the kids and the general household needs and wants too.

Section 6 - Lists
Gift Ideas, Handmade Gift Ideas, Date Night Ideas, Household Project Ideas

Gift & Handmade Gift Ideas:  I am constantly finding and thinking of things for people.  I'm a gifts love language in both giving and receiving.  But I often think of things and then forget them (Mommy and pregnancy brain) organizing.yourway.net already had these forms made! I was so happy :)

Date Night Ideas:  Here's a bit of honesty.  My husband is still learning to be romantic (he's very open about that so it's ok that I'm sharing that.  This form is to help him in planning dates for us. :)

Household Projects Ideas: Basic a place for me to put my decorating ideas.  I'm constantly finding ideas, mostly online, so this page is only filled 1/2 way so I can put pictures, color swatches, etc on it.

Section 7 - Phone and Address Book
I'm constantly asking for peoples addresses over and over again.  This section is the only thing that is store bought because I wanted the tabs for the letters.  I went to office max to look at tabs (which are expensive for what they are in my opinion!) and bought Day Runners phone book tabs.  It cost me $10 and has 12 tabs.  All the other tabs I was looking at were close to the same price for 5-8 tabs.  So I bought the pre-made ones

Section 8 - Holiday
Will be my holiday planner.  Again, organizing.yourway.net has some great holiday planners and once we get closer I will be using them.  But for now they are sitting in a folder on Joe's computer.

And there you have it!  I used a 3 ring binder I already had and it had 5 section dividers.  So the cost of my notebook was $10 plus the amount of ink and paper I used to print these pages.  Not bad and still cheaper and way more detailed than a store-bought planner.

Let me know if you have any questions or even ideas to improve my binder!