Household Notebook: Planner for an Organized Home

Personal organizers are hot, hot, hot. Smart home managers tackle time management and goal setting with the help of an all-in-one calendar, scheduling and information retrieval tool.

Families need a organizer, too! Whether it's called a household notebook, a home management binder or family organizer, this simple idea saves time, cuts stress, and enhances communication in any-sized family or household.

A standard-sized binder stocked with calendars and schedules, planner forms and inventories, a Household Notebook creates a one-stop information center for busy families. Whether it's a carpool schedule or a co-worker's phone number, the Household Notebook holds the information you need to check each day.

Ready for an evening out? Flip the Notebook open to the "Emergency Information" page, and the babysitter will always know where to find you.

Time for dinner? Menu planners, recipe organizers and shopping list make it easy to feed the family night after night. Clean house fast with cleaning schedules, chore lists and seasonal checklists for home maintenance.

Stay-at-home parents and homeschool families add scheduling features to the Household Notebook. Daily morning and evening checklists and family schedules make it easy to organize life in busy families with small children.

Ready to create your own Household Notebook? Click the links below for more information about making and using a Household Notebook ... to get organized at home.

What's A Household Notebook?

Unlike a personal planner, which is designed for use by one person, a household notebook or family organizer serves as "command central" for an entire family. While each family's organizer will be unique, most are simple three-ring notebooks with several divider sections.

Most household notebooks include a telephone and message section, a divider for church, clubs or volunteer activities, travel, home management and finance. sections, medical information, and personal records like gift list and clothing size charts. At-home and homeschooling parents often add personal and family schedules to coordinate life with young children.

Because they're infinitely expandable, household notebooks become as distinctive as the family that uses them. A family with school-aged children involved in dance, music and sports will include organizer sections for rehearsal and practice schedules, summer activity ideas and video to-rent lists.

A two-career couple with pre-school children may add babysitter and day care dividers and an emergency telephone list to their household notebook.

Empty nesters will rely on packing checklists for vacations, home repair records and gift suggestion lists for far-flung. children.

Professional organizers recommend the concept. Deniece Schofield, author of Confessions of a Happily Organized Family, points out. that the "purpose of the family organizer is to hold and organize all of the papers that anyone in the house has to look at or refer to.".

In Totally Organized the Bonnie McCullough Way, writer Bonnie McCullough advises setting up a planning notebook, with sections for "calendar", "telephone", "money" and "people.". Bonnie advises adding. specific dividers to each section to personalize the planning notebook.

These organizing professionals know a good thing when they see one! By compiling and storing family information in a central location, life at home benefits. No more searching for scraps of paper or mislaid permission slips. They're always right where they belong: in the household notebook.

How To Make Your Household Notebook

To create your family's Household Notebook, start with a three-ring binder, some clear page protectors, paper and tabbed dividers.

Using tabbed dividers from the office supply store, set up dividers according to your family's needs. Remember, each family grows their own family organizer; expect divider categories to change along with your family. We've listed some suggested dividers in this article, but your family is unique, so your dividers will reflect that. Be sure to place a few page protectors behind each divider section.

Next, get printing. At a minimum, your Household Notebook will need calendars, phone and address forms and lined blank pages; form-a-holics may go whole hog and print until the wee hours. Add the forms you need to each divider section. Pretty cover and spine inserts can be used with a clear-view binder, or glued to the front and spine of your binder. They'll help keep you motivated--and make it easy to find your notebook in a crowded bookcase.

Once the dividers and page protectors are in place and you've added calendars and basic forms, you're ready to begin. Gather all scattered slips and scraps of paper: pizza menus and business cards, school hand-outs and church bulletins, class schedules and scout camp brochures. Enter information in the Notebook, writing phone numbers on the correct phone directory pages, punching and filing club calendars, slipping magazine articles into page protectors.

Be creative! Add dividers that express your household's priorities and needs. A freezer cooking divider stores recipes, instructions and reheating information for the results of a once-a-month cooking session. Planning home improvement projects? Add a divider, and store snips and swatches in page protectors. Use Master To-Do and Daily To-Do lists in any divider to keep track of ongoing projects and goals, while blank lined pages hold information not covered by a specific form.

Keep your Household Notebook near the family's main telephone and family calendar to guide family activities and decisions. Cupcake request from the Cub Scout den mother? Note it on the calendar, and add the ingredients to the shopping list. Planning a Friday-night date with your spouse? Open the folder to the Babysitter's Information page and review the information with the babysitter before you leave the house.

Suggested Dividers for a Household Notebook

Planning Divider

To start your Household Notebook, begin with the basics: planning and time management. Claim your time with a Planning Divider!

What belongs here? Calendars, schedules and to-do lists direct the course of family life. In-depth planning tools, like mission statements or goal planning worksheets, do the hard work of translating goals to reality. Use a three-hole punch to add work schedules, school calendars and events lists for church and civic activities.

Phone Divider

Calling all phone numbers! The Phone Directory is the most useful, most-consulted section of any Household Notebook. The Phone Directory is a single place to put class rosters, take-out phone numbers, club directories, emergency phone numbers and phone messages. No more scraps of paper, missing numbers or scribbled phone books!

Family and School Divider

Family is where the heart is--and deserves its own divider. This section tracks information needs of family members and family life:

Families with school-aged children will want to add a school divider to hold:

Home Management Divider

Bring it all back home! The Home Management divider holds information central to house and home. Cleaning, entertaining, decorating and household storage information find a home here.

Consider these ideas for the Home Management divider:

Meals and Menus Divider

In the kitchen, the Household Notebook helps plan meals, create menus, and track inventory in pantry and freezer. Use this section to hold grocery shopping lists and price book forms for maximum savings at the super market.

Money and Finance Divider

Tracking dollars and cents makes sense, so add a Money and Finance divider to your Household Notebook. Keep track of household finances with budget pages, inventory sheets and household informaiton.

Here are some examples of the kinds of information that can be included behind this divider::

Health and Fitness

Organize family health care with a Health and Fitness divider. Have a medical emergency? Grab the Household Notebook on the way to the Emergency Room. Visit to the pediatrician? Use this section to record illnesses, medication and medical history.

Types of information to file in the Health and Fitness section include:

Travel and Activities

Time for fun! The Travel and Activities divider covers the extra-curricular activities that make life worthwhile. Hobby, church, club, sports, volunteer, vacation and travel ideas are included here.

Your Household Notebook may have several dividers for this purpose. Are you part of a musical chorale? Give it a divider. Do the children play serious soccer? Divide it up!

What belongs in these sections? Any and every piece of paper pertaining to that activity. Prayer chain lists. Sports information sheets. Lists for travel and camping.

These sections will vary from family to family, but here are some ideas:

Organize Christmas: Create a Christmas Planner Notebook

What's the fast-track to an organized holiday season? Create a Christmas holiday planner notebook!

Organizing holiday preparations in a simple three-ring binder takes the household notebook concept to new holiday heights!

To create your tool for efficient holiday planning, try these pointers from sister site Organized Christmas:

As we get ready for Christmas, we’ll be making lists (and checking them a lot more than twice!), holding discussions with spouses, children and parents, and drawing up a holiday budget.

Too often, we record our plans piecemeal, consigning them to a confused clutter of scrawled envelopes, jotted notes and cryptic calendar entries—none of which make it to the shopping center with us when it’s time to buy gifts.

Organized people keep the results of their work in a central place: a Christmas holiday planner notebook. Complement to a household notebook, it'll track preparations for a stress-free holiday season.

Create a Christmas Notebook. Easy to make and easier to use, a Christmas Notebook cuts through holiday clutter and keeps planning on track. Home to lists and recipes, calendars and gift ideas, this simple tool is the architect and source of a serene celebration.

Find a format. A Christmas Notebook is usually just that--a standard three-ring binder—but it doesn’t have to be. Your Notebook may be less conventional: a file stored on a computer, a set of index cards, a spiral steno pad, a section in your personal planner or a database recorded in a digital PDA. Organized people keep the results of their work in a central place: the Christmas Notebook.

Whatever the format, the Notebook concept remains the same. It’s a single-source reference for all things Christmas, and it will become your best friend as we get ready for the season.

Cover story. A pretty cover sets a happy tone, so create one for your Notebook. Paper crafters enjoy adding decorative covers to their Notebooks, but even the art-impaired (like me!) can slide photos or holiday cards into the see-through pocket of a clear-view binder. Simpler still: print free cover and spine forms from the Organized Christmas Forms Library for a fast, festive touch.

You’ll want to keep your Notebook to yourself, however! It will contain information not for the prying eyes of eager family members.

If Christmas curiosity reaches a fever pitch in your household, consider the Hide-In-Plain-Sight method for your Notebook cover. Label a binder "Manuals and Warranties" and slide it into the bookcase between college textbooks and old phone directories, or call your Ready for Christmas planner section, "PTA Meeting Notes” to keep Christmas secrets until the big day.

Divide and conquer. A good notebook relies on dividers to make information accessible. Every family’s needs are different, but most Notebooks will contain these dividers:

Other families add dividers for seasonal holidays, service projects, children’s’ activities, or personal sections for each family member.

Dividers are as unique and individual as the families they serve, so choose dividers that make sense for you.

Here are some additional divider suggestions:

Supply stash. Dividers, lists and forms are only the beginning of a well-seasoned Notebook. Add these supplies to the list; they’ll make it easier to use your Christmas planning tool:

Notebook Tip: Make it portable! Whether you set up a binder, use an existing planner or harness the power of an electronic organizer, be sure you can take your Notebook with you. Gift lists, shopping lists, clothing size records, wardrobe inventories, decor ideas and pantry planners should be at your fingertips ... anywhere!

Notebook Tip: Give the Gift!
Making a Christmas Notebook? Don’t stop at one: a pre-made Christmas Notebook is a welcome gift for a sister or a friend. Include calendars and forms for use next season. You’ll get ready for Christmas together!

Resources For A Household Notebook

Our free printable forms library is a great place to begin building your household notebook: you'll find printable calendars, schedules, planner pages and checklists to make a good start.

Need real-world inspiration? Browse our Notebook Tours topic. We'll post the Web's best examples from notebooking bloggers.

Looking for a challenge? Visit Lisa's Notebook Hacks site. A veteran OrganizedHome.com member, she'll cheer you on with challenges and concepts to build and use your household notebook.

Specialty Notebooks: Occasions, Hobbies and Crafts

Using a household notebook to organize home life is only the beginning; the concept applies nicely to holidays, special occasions, crafts and hobbies.

Consider creating special notebook versions to organize: