The following is a guest post from momAgendaCOMM blogger Tara Ziegmont.
What do you do with all of the assorted papers that enter your home?
I don’t know about you, but I am inundated by papers. There are schedules of events, recipes I want to try, bills, statements, flyers, receipts, take-out menus and who knows what else.
There’s so. much. paper.
I spent almost four years as a mom who worked outside of the home. Enjoying my husband and our daughter was my first priority and I never took the time to design a system to keep my papers organized. By default, I made piles. There were piles of papers in my living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, and – well, you get the idea.
Now, I’m home with my kids full time, but I’m still working. Between my part time job (I work from home), my mom blog, local blog, and consulting business, I work more hours now than I did before.
I still make piles. {sigh}
To remedy my piles problem, I’ve been slowly working towards creating a Home Management Notebook. I found inspiration and downloads for my notebook all over the internet.
• Home Management and Folio {printables from MomAgenda}
And I stuffed it all into the pages of my Kitchen Folio in this order:
1. My personal goals & Mom mission statement because I need a reminder on hard days (with memory verses on the back)
2. Contact info (some of the pages that came with my Kitchen Folio – Important information, important phone numbers, home-related contacts, babysitter info)
3. Schedules & calendars (the birthdays & anniversaries page that came with the Kitchen Folio, plus a monthly schedule of bills due and a weekly recurring events schedules)
4. Finances (budget, bills to pay, bank information, receipts)
5. Family info (the family medical info page that came with my Kitchen Folio, plus gift ideas for holidays [including current sizes and color preferences], books I want to read, and a list of medications for each of us)
6. Household (cleaning schedule, chores lists, inventory of large items like appliances and valuables, warranty info, vehicle maintenance records, online account info, insurance policies, utility company contacts)
7. Meal planning (a list of our favorite meals, recipes to try, my pricebook, pantry and freezer inventory)
8. Travel & activities (Before we leave checklist, vacation ideas and brainstorming, info for kids’ lessons and clubs)
My Kitchen Folio is full, but I managed to get everything I needed into it.
My Home Management Notebook did not come together overnight or even in the space of a month. It took a lot of research, planning, downloading, printing, doing and redoing to get it into a place that works for me.
Even then, it only works for me if I use it.
It’s not perfect. I need a daily To Do list. I’ve been thinking about using Simple Mom’s Daily Docket, but I am concerned about printing a new page every single day. That’s a lot of paper and ink. I thought about printing 5 or 7 (or 10 or 14) and laminating them so that I could see a week (or two) at a time but then wipe off and reuse them. I am indecisive.
Let me know if you have a better solution.
What do you do with all of your household papers?
Tara Ziegmont writes a variety of posts on her personal blog Feels Like Home and is the managing editor of a local blog called Harrisburg Area Moms. You can also connect with Tara on