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household notebook

Household Notebook: Planner for an Organized Home

household notebookSo you think businesspeople are the only folks who need a personal planner? Think again: families need an organizer, too, to keep life moving smoothly on the home front. 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.


Get With The Plan: Pretty Printable Planner from Brenda Arnall

Papercrafters, alert! Feast your eyes on this printable 2010 calendar planner from blogger Brenda Arnall:

printable 2010 planner

This fresh and pretty printable planner will help you get organized for 2010--and would make a lovely homemade holiday gift. Assembled with a Bind It All craft tool, it's easy to add decorated cover pages for a slim, efficient planner notebook.

WIth half-size pages, crisp digital graphics and extra pages for to-do lists, shopping lists and scrapbooking page planners, these free printable pages will make a sweet treat from your printer!

Get with the plan!

Get With The Plan: Printable 2010 Planner Pages



Tour of Tours: Bren's Home Management Binder

So you really want to go under the hood of a working home management binder? Quilting blogger Bren, of Pieces From Me, hosts a binder tour of all binder tours!

Including scans of working planner pages, Bren's binder tour gives a great overview of the "how" of using a home management binder. She's sharing lots of photographs, so be patient while this page loads; it will be worth the wait!

Bren's Home Management Binder

home management binder



HomeSchoolMom's Flylady Planner Pages: Free Printable!

Now in, from TheHomeSchoolMom.com: a 2-page weekly planner/menu planner combo. Designed to be used by followers of Flylady, this free printable will organize schedules, menu planning and shopping.

In .pdf format, so you'll need the free Adobe Reader to view and print:

Weekly Planner / Menu Planner



Free Printable: Weekly Schedule from MomAgenda.com

So you're all thumbs at the "crafty" thing, and wouldn't know a desktop publishing program if it bit you?

Try this free printable weekly schedule from MomAgenda.com. It's designed to give you a taste of their product, but nobody says you can't tuck it into your home management binder for an organized week!

In .pdf format, so you'll need the Adobe Reader to print:

Free Printable Weekly Schedule from MomAgenda.com



With The Fruit Of Her Hands' Household Notebook

A comprehensive look inside the Household Notebook of blogger With The Fruit of Her Hands, this binder tour should help anyone struggling with scheduling issues.

A bonus: check out the creative use of stick-on tabs plus page protectors to subdivide a larger binder.

Household Notebook

household notebook



Christmas Notebook Cover Tour: Get Organized for the Holidays

It's that time of year: we're building Christmas notebooks or holiday organizers to help us plan and prepare for the holiday season.

Need inspiration to make your notebook pretty? Check out this Flickr set! Pretty and practical notebook covers make it a delight to get ready for Christmas:

christmas notebook cover

Christmas Notebook Covers



Safety First: What You Should NOT Put In Your Household Notebook

Life tips blogger Kristin loves the household notebook concept, but adds a big "But!": information you shouldn't include in your household notebook.

If your notebook fell into the hands of a stranger, what information would it disclose? Get Kristin's guidelines for keeping your family binder a friend, and not a security risk:

What You Should NOT Put Your Home Organizer



Friends and Futures: A Double Household Notebook Tour

When blogger Elizabeth and her friend Kim took on the challenge to create household notebooks, they aimed high.

Deciding to create more than just a simple binder for household information, they envisioned their notebooks as "living books" that would help teach their daughters to keep house.

In these posts, Elizabeth shares her Foss Family Home Companion, while Kim outlines her Family Management Journal. Both notebook tours go further: they explain the thinking behind these two young mothers' decision to create order for their families, now and for the future.

Don't miss Kim's downloadable dividers and forms in Microsoft Word format. Check them out:

Elizabeth's Family Home Companion

Kim's Home Management Journal

Home Management Journal - The Basics

Home Management Journal - Housekeeping

Home Management Journal - Cleaning Forms and Lists



A Not-Notebook Solution: Home Management Whiteboard

If you're visually oriented, there may be resistance to the idea of a household notebook. Who wants to flip all those pages ... and what happens when you set the mail down on top of your daily schedule?

Clever blogger Jumping On The Bed has an in-your-face solution: a home management whiteboard. Using a large dry erase marker board, she juggles schedules, lists and information right on the wall. Check out her not-notebook solution for better home management!

Home Management Board

home management binder alternative