Try It Out Tuesday - "Our Life, Organized" Binder

Linking up with Kelly from My Purple Brick Road for our weekly Try It Out Tuesday post.

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Today's post is about my "Our Life Binder".  The pin I chose is HERE, and the website it links to is HERE.

You might have heard of this before.  Most people call it a "home management binder", and they're all the rage with "mommy blogger" sites.  I had a hard time finding descriptions and instructions to make a home management binder that would work with our life, i.e: I work outside the home, we have no children (living in our home full time), I don't home-school, I am the primary bread-winner (for now!), and I work crazy hours.  But, I still really wanted a way to simplify our lives, have all of our important information together in one place, and develop a system for mundane tasks like paying the bills and grocery shopping.  I haven't been the best about putting our system into practice, and the next few months I will be challenging myself to stick to using the binder on a daily basis and developing more of a routine around our home.  

What?  You HAVEN'T heard of a home  management binder??? All you need to start your own is a few easy to find items.  

Materials: 

~3-ring binder, folder, or notebook

~Page dividers

~Paper to print out your binder information sheets

This is my personal binder cover-to-cover.  All of the products I used were purchased from Wal-Mart, and cost a total of around $20.  I took a bright cheery pink 1" binder, clear sheet protectors (simply because I'm weird about liking things in sheet protectors!), and plastic tabbed dividers with pockets as the section dividers, and I bought some Sharpies and dry erase markers.  I designed most of the printed sheets from compiling information from many of the organizational/management binders I found online.  I customized the entire book to fit OUR LIFE...and you can do the same for yours! 

Cover

Labeled dividers

"at a glance" weekly calendar so we
all know who is doing what and when

Personal information, one page for each adult

Child information sheet
Customize to your specific child's needs and activities

Medical information
One for each member of the family

Medical info continued

Example of the pocket dividers for each section.
This one is the "finances" section.
Unpaid bills go in the pocket, stamps are kept handy,
and payments are logged on the "bills paid" ledger
(ledger not pictured due to personal financial information on it)

Vehicle information with make/model
license info, and insurance carrier information.

Address book

Shopping list of our usual purchases
(this one is for food, I also have one for household items/
paper products/soap/etc.

Weekly menu-at-a-glance

I also have a few pages that I didn't show, such as a section for take-out and delivery menus (which we don't use much since we're both eating healthier and losing weight), and I have sheets printed out with our lease information, individual bill/payment information along with utility account numbers and customer service phone numbers for easier reference.

There you have it.

Our Life...Organized!

(A great resource for the printable sheets for your binder is Life Your Way.  I used a few of theirs as-is and used others as templates for my own binder.)


Modifications: Heavily modified to fit our current life status.  But, that's the beauty of it, it can grow and change with your family as it and your circumstances change!

For The Win!:  Almost any and every piece of information we could possibly need regarding ourselves, our family, our finances, and our life habits are compiled in one easy to find, easy to use binder.


Fail Factors:  ~Can be time consuming to set up initially.
                     ~Does take daily use and maintenance to achieve the full benefit of the organizational system.
                     ~Almost any and every piece of information we could possibly need regarding ourselves, our family, our finances, and our life habits are compiled in one easy to find, easy to use binder.  Hmmm...    

*"Try It Out Tuesday" is a blog hop (or blog party) created by 3 friends, and is inspired by Pinterest. We choose one, sometimes two "pins" (if you want to be labeled an overachiever, just sayin') per week, try them out, and review them on our blogs. Anyone can join in, just leave the link to your Try It Out Tuesday post in the comments and we'll add you to the list! C'mon, let's Try It Out!