Home Sweet Home

This month, I’m focusing on practices to help get and keep my home life organized. I love to GET organized, but I also know I’m not always the best at keeping it that way.

As such, I’ve adopted a few practices to help get myself and my home on track.

To be clear, I have not perfected these practices, nor do I think you have to in order to have a healthy, loving, cozy home. However, I know they are helping keep me sane and I hope you find them to be helpful as well.

Last week, I shared my morning brain dump routine. For a FREE printable to start this practice yourself, visit my resource page.

On a bigger scale, I have found myself wishing for an organization system that would keep some of the things I referenced or used the most all in one place. And since filing cabinets are where things go never to be seen again, I decided to create a home binder.

WHAT IS A HOME BINDER?

A home binder is a fantastic way to keep your household organized and running smoothly. It serves as a central location for important information, schedules, and records. A home binder can be as simple or detailed as you desire.

I decided not to reinvent the wheel and found this helpful downloadable resource from CleanMama.com as a starting point in creating a binder of my own.

To set it up, I started with a two inch binder, dividing tabs and a box of sheet protectors. (My husband knows this is my secret love language…binders, sheet protectors, and spreadsheets, oh my!)

You could have as many or as few sections as you like, but for me, I created a section for each of the following.

SARAH’S HOME BINDER SECTIONS:

• Family Information - insurance info, important contacts (school, medical & otherwise), babysitter info in case of emergency, and helpful notes about my son’s eating/bedtime routines

• Projects & Home Maintenance - I used Clean Mama’s template for this one and find it helpful in tracking what we have and haven’t done.

• Budget and Bills - bill payment checklist and password log

• Chore Charts - My littlest one is only just entering a stage to help with chores, so this section hasn’t had much use yet and is one I’m not entirely sure I’ll end up keeping.

• 2025 in 2025 - This is a. free download from Nourishing Minimalism. It will help us declutter our home as we get rid of 2,025 things in 2025. Along with it, I keep decluttering checklists I purchased from CleanMama.com.

• Menu Planning - I keep a list of my family’s favorite recipes for each and easy dinners along with where the recipe can be found. For nights I’m feeling uninspired, this section has surely come in handy! This section also includes recipes we’d like to try. Up next on my list? SkinnyTaste Chicken Parmesan Rolls!

• Blank Grocery Lists - I keep these handy when meal planning to organize my shopping trip.

• A separate section for each of my sons where I keep documents and info relevant to their schooling, schedules, etc.

• Health Plan - Information about my own health plan and doctor visits

• Travel - reservation confirmations, itineraries, and packing checklists

A FEW TIPS…

• Keep your home binder in a handy location and tuck it away if you have a babysitter, only needing to pull out the pages you’ve prepped for him/her.

• Use sheet protectors. Totally worth it and everything in your binder lasts longer.

• Make it your own. My sections may not be the sections you need or want. Think about what you spend the most time looking for and/or referring to, and make your sections fit those needs.

• Don’t want a physical binder? Make it digital! Create your own home binder in a Google doc and use the tab feature for sections, or download an editable digital version from a website like CleanMama.com.

You may not need this level of organization, but for me I have found it to be a helpful resource and hope to elevate my use of it in the year ahead.

What tools or strategies do you use to keep your home and family organized? I’d love to hear!