Have you heard about Christmas pocket planners? Handmade from scrapbooking paper and a simple pocket file folder, these little holiday planners are inexpensive, creative and just plain fun!

The pocket planner concept is sweeping the scrapbooking and rubber stamping world, but there's always been one thing missing: a set of printable forms for Christmas organizing.

Until now! Introducing the latest Organized Christmas forms set: Christmas Pocket Planner Forms!

Autumn days are long and lazy? Not for today's busy families. Between work, children's activities, and vacation plans, even breezy fall days don't seem long enough to get everything done at home.

There's a solution for busy times. Just as your body needs a "minimum daily allowance" of vitamins and minerals, an organized home needs a minimum of maintenance and attention to keep running smoothly.

Think of this as a Magic Minimum: a short list of essential household tasks. It's a bottom-line list of chores and activities necessary to keep things running at a basic level.

With a working Magic Minimum plan, the household stays afloat, even when time is short.

You've heard about bulk freezer cooking. Whether you know it as once-a-month cooking, freezer assets, OAMC or freezer cooking, the idea sounds intriguing. In a single day, cook and freeze dinner entrees for a month--or more.

But the work! Loaded down with toddlers or balancing a full-time job, you can't imagine devoting two full days a month to shopping, preparing and cooking all those meals.

Take heart! Freezer cooking is not just for the energetic. Try these strategies to build your frozen assets bit by bit:

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

Every family needs a family disaster plan, and that goes double during the volatile hurricane season. Solution? Try this interactive Family Preparedness Plan generator from Weather.com.

To create a plan, jump to the link below. Step-by-step, you'll add personalized information about family members, pets, meeting place and location of emergency supplies.

When finished, the plan generator provides printable identification cards, checklists and forms for your household notebook:

Create a Family Preparedness Plan

It's Autumn.

Pumpkins glow in golden fields. Shorter days, crisp mornings signal winter's approach.

Can the holidays be far behind?

Use Autumn's brisk and breezy days to conquer deep-cleaning chores for a clean and comfortable winter home, and wrap up summer's outdoor areas for the coming of cold weather.

Our Fall Cleaning Chore Checklist will help you prepare home and hearth for the coming of winter:

Labor Day weekend ahead! School bells are ringing, football fills the airwaves and September looms. Will the holidays be far behind?

Sure, you're dreaming of the perfect Christmas--then you open your eyes to reality. Looking around the house, it's hard to imagine how to cut the clutter, manage fall cleaning and prepare for Christmas all at once.

How will you bring the current state of domestic chaos into holiday readiness: clean, organized, prepared?

It's time to kick off the Houseworks Holiday Plan at sister site Organized Christmas!

Working week by week, we'll deep-clean, declutter, and prepare for the holiday season in small, sustainable bites.

Along the way, we'll create a personalized Christmas planner to simplify the holidays--and online HHP communities provide motivation, inspiration and fun.

The fun starts Sunday, August 31! Will you be ready?

Get The Houseworks Holiday Plan

Print Free Christmas Planner Pages

Morning Madness! Only the pre-dinner "Arsenic Hour" comes close in the "Calgon, take me away!" category. Bathroom fights, soggy cereal, and the ever-present, "Mommy! I can't find my . . . !"

Getting the family out the door in the morning can make any parent want to pull the bedclothes up and hide. One small concept can go a long way to taming the morning beast: the family Launch Pad. Just as a spaceship must have a dedicated structure to support liftoff, so family members need a Launch Pad to stabilize them as they blast out the door.

What is a Launch Pad? It's a dedicated space for each family member:

Who says printable menu planners need to be boring? Not creative craft blogger FutureGirl!

Her wonderful printable menu planner is a whimsical solution to "What's for dinner?"--and better still, she share the wealth with free printable versions in color, black-and-white, and half-size.

If back-to-school means new emphasis on menu planning in your organized home, check out this clever--and creative--printable:

Printable Menu Planner

Once-a-month cooking. Frozen assets. OAMC. Meal assembly. Whatever you call it, cooking many meals in a single session banks home-cooked meals--and precious family time--for busy home managers.

What's not to like about freezer cooking? Economies of scale speed cooking chores. Buying in bulk saves money. Home preparation fosters good nutrition. New options like "meal assembly franchises" help home cooks build frozen assets quickly.

Whether you cook once and eat for a month, sneak up on freezer cooking, or fill the freezer fast from the meal preparation storefront, get ready to feed the family--fast!