At the start of the year I was all motivated and really ready to get the house and our lives a bit more organised. Oh I had big plans, I had high ideals, I was going to keep on top of the laundry for goodness sake.
It’s March now (March? where the heck did February go?) and while I have made some changes and taken some steps towards getting and staying organised the past few weeks have seen most of it fall in a heap. The house is a dump, I am really lacking motivation to cook, there is once again baskets of clean laundry all over the place and I never did make it to the bottom of the dirty wash basket. I can find plenty of things to blame; being busy, everyone getting sick, the girls struggling with kinder, the hot weather, the cold weather… I am pretty good at coming up with new and exciting excuses. Fact is though, I’ve hit a slump and I need to work at getting out of it.
So since it is way way WAY too hot to tackle things like baking or laundry or major cleaning and clearing at the moment (we have no air-conditioning and it hit 40C up here again today) I’ve decided to let myself off the hock on those fronts until the end of the week when it is supposed to cool off, and focus on something I have been wanting to do a for a while now. A Household Folder – unless someone can come up with a way more groovy name for it!
“What the heck is a household folder” I hear you ask?
Well I am not exactly sure but it sounds like something that would help keep your organised doesn’t it???
I started thinking about this when I was looking for a biscuit recipe. Of course the recipe was just written on a scrap of paper and shoved in between the pages of some recipe book or other and I had no hope of actually finding it when I wanted it. It did, however fall out on my head as I yanked something else off the shelf a few weeks later and I caught myself thinking – there just has to be a better way! Sure there is.. a nice fancy recipe folder like the ones at kiki-k.
Oh but they have all kind of foldery goodness over at kikki-k so I began to wonder what other useful organising things I could put in a folder. What other bits of paper do I loose? What other things do I find myself searching for or re-writing over and over again? And surely I could make my own folder, create and print out my own cool little sheets for half the cost?
So that is where I am at… with this idea for a ‘Household folder’ with a section for recipes that I collect, and maybe a section for shopping lists (I am working on a master monthly shopping list), maybe menu plans, and um… I don’t know what else?
Do you have anything like this? If so what do you have in it? Any little tips or tricks for making it more useful?
Help me out here, make suggestions, share your wisdom, link me up people!
Dee says
Just briefly as I have an arm full of Anya
http://organizedhome.com/printable-planner-forms/home-management/houseworks-planner
:)
Lulu says
In terms of putting things in the folder, I tend to lose our bills and or instruction manuals because I just let them pile up on the counter and then when I clean up I put them all in differnt places. Maybe you could have a section for them!!!
It sounds like a great idea though. I do my menu planning and stick recipies I want to remember in my journal……problem is when this journal is full I will start a new one and the other one will probably just float around and when I am looking for stuff I will forget it is in there.
Great idea!!!!
Stitch Sista says
I kind of have one…but it has lots of other stuff, all the kinder stuff, medical stuff, miscellaneous.
Just grab a big binder, get some dividers, a bunch of plastic pockets and you’re good to go…each section can have whatever the heck you like in it.
I would personally use a separate binder for recipes…(haven’t actually managed it yet, but mine too are scraps of paper living in close proximity to a bunch of unused cookbooks)
Lizzie says
Hi again Kate
Oh boy, have you hit on my ‘thing’ with this post!
I’m a big fan of Household Folders (I call mine my Home Management Binder but it goes by many names around the ‘net). The obsession started with Flylady (www.flylady.net) – soon grew out of her, but then found dozens upon dozens of blogs online which gave links to the ones they made, so I remain hooked on the whole idea.
I did my own post about mine –
http://lizzieshome.com/2007/11/10/home-management-binder-tour-brand-new/
You do NOT need to go this far, LOL. And trust me, I change mine FREQUENTLY. Just recently I started thinking of condensing the whole A4 shemozzle down to A5 size. If you visit this post –
http://lizzieshome.com/2006/12/16/a-tour-of-my-home-management-binder/
– and scroll right down to the bottom, you’ll see some photos I threw in of our Family Cookbook, which is A5, so it would look fairly similar to that. (This is my first version of a HMB tour…alot of it is similar to the new one (first link above) but some things were changed)
I will say one other thing though – buy a very wide binder. You’ll keep finding more and more stuff you want to keep (printed recipes from the net, craft instructions, oodles of stuff) and you’ll run out of room if you choose a skinny binder. And also, though I know of some ladies who use theirs completely religiously every day, referring to it multiple times, I don’t tend to do that. In fact, mine kind of sits on the shelf most of the time, but that’s not to say it isn’t extremely useful – it holds all our financial tracking, for a start. I have printed out a Basic Daily Plan, laminated it and put it on the fridge. It’s by far the most useful thing from my HMB anyway as it gives an overview of my whole day – and trust me, the fridge is the perfect spot to see it multiple times a day – ahem.
You’ll probably want to check out some printables to put in your binder. Not necessary, but they do come in handy. I like the simplicity of http://www.donnayoung.org, and she has some half size planner sheets which would be good if you want to do an A5 one. And http://www.householdnotebook.com has some good overall info. This site (the one Dee mentioned): http://organizedhome.com/printable-planner-forms is good for ideas but they rely pretty heavily on colour in their printables which can suck your ink clean out of your printer – not good. And of course, you can always check out MY modest collection, LOL:
http://lizzieshome.com/printables/
It’s not a very extensive list but I’ll be slowly adding to it over time. I’ll be posting again soon about my Basic Daily Plan so you can see how I’ve laid that out. Most of the time I don’t get beyond this! But it includes things like cooking, laundry and a window for housework each day, so if I stick to the BDP I’m doing pretty okay I think – anything else is a bonus! I’m in the process of compiling a section on my blog specifically relating to Household Notebooks – whenever I post about these they always get heaps of hits so there are a lot of HMBers out there!
Seriously, give the Household Notebook thing a go – I’ve seen some really stunning ones out there. If you want some more resources give me a shout via email and I can point you in the right direction.
Cheers,
Lizzie
Bettina says
I have a basic plan of my routine for the week to remind me (wash my sheets/towels monday/ kids sheets/towels tuesday, empty all bins thursday etc) and a basic daily routine of the minimum I need to get done each day to keep the house from looking like all the appliances threw up in it.
Flylady works quite well for me. I don’t do the shiny sink thing, but the building routines stuff really helps.
Carole says
Oh my goodness your posts crack me up! I could have written half of them myself! The whole “I don’t know what the folder is for, but sounding like that it really must help” is me all over!
How about “The useful book” ….kinda like playschool’s the useful box but different….LOL!
Thanks for the laugh and the inspiration as always!
JanMary, N Ireland says
I have one in my kitchen beside my laptop – everything goes in – all those notes from school (one for each child), bills to be paid, recipes cut from magazines etc. Every now and then, I go through and remove evertyhing that is out of date.
nottryingforaboy says
Would something like this work?
http://www.chocolatecakeclub.com/meplorbi.html
sister suffragette says
I have a book for recipes which someone gave us before we left home. It has sections such as ‘sweets’, “soups” etc. It has stuck in recipes from the net, handwritten ones we made up and liked, photocopied pages from other books. It is a well loved and prety chaotic looking book, but I always know where to find those loose recipes. Must get around to actually sticking a few more in properly.
I am also hoping that my blog will serve as a recipe source for my kids once they leave home, and I’m not there in person to guide them with cooking. I hope it will be my voice guiding them cook through the collection of things I’ve cooked for them as the years pass. That’s what I hope for anyway LOL.
Rach says
You are singing my song, Kate! I was about 6 months pregnant with Gabriel when I was wandering kikki-k and found the “Did you remember the milk” home organisation folder. Hm… Is sitting on a shelf somewhere under some more paperwork. No links to share, but will certainly be looking at the ones others have posted! xx
Mycrazylife says
Well I don’t have it, but I need it! Although, I might require something a tad bit larger, like a household filing cabinet.
I don’t think I would know where to begin, but I am hoping you go through with this so we can see the end result. I need help, or at the very least a psychiatrist.
Jill says
I have several folders.
One for the household bills.
One for recipes. Sarah just bought me super cool one from Kiki but I had a terrible time trying to sort my thirty year collection of cuttings into the categories provided. I’d like one that had different cuisines maybe – italian, chinese, vietnamese, Mum’s old etc
My third has manuals and guarantees for all the household appliances. This is very handy when something stops working.
fazzbech says
Why set yourself up for failure I say! I couldn’t think of anything worse than a household folder, but it seems that is just me! Good luck with it though!
Jayne says
It’s not just you fazzbech ;-) Not my bag either-but hey, if it works for you, why not hehe
Dee says
Wow lots of links! Going to check them out.
brightonwoman/Mommy Bee says
I have a hanging file for my recipes. I do have a couple of cookbooks i use all the time, but for my other things (from friends, taken out of magazines, printed off the net, or invented and scribbled on a sticky note…) I put them in the file box. I have separate folders for the recipe sections “chicken” “pasta” “desserts” “Asian” etc. If i felt like taking the time, I would paste all the recipes onto cardstock, put them in sheet protectors, and put them in a binder, sorted by type. THAT would make them very accessible. But my mom had the hanging folders and now I do too…I’m not very original. LOL!
Guera says
I missed this first time round – I really need to make one of these too – I’m off to check out all those links.
The only tip I have for keeping recipes organised – start a food blog. ;) I’m hoping to build up a bit of an online cookbook for myself at mine…
Cath says
any suggestions greatly appreciated! x