Household Notebook

So, I’m back with some pictures of my handy-dandy scheduler.  First, the binder I’m not ashamed to take into the grocery store!

From 2011 WordPress Pics

Isn’t it nice?  I especially like the closure (and it’s padded, which you can’t really tell from this picture, but I like).

Here’s my weekly menu planner – I’m trying at least …

From 2011 WordPress Pics

And here’s a shot of my weekly schedule – I like the white space where I can make notes for myself about whatever …

From 2011 WordPress Pics

Most of the binder is full of coupons …

From 2011 WordPress Pics

I read about using baseball card holders to organize coupons and while it does take a little longer to organize at home, it makes the shopping part cake.  I pull coupons I want to use as I add the food to my shopping cart and when I get to the register I just hand over my stack.  There’s no shuffling through a stack of coupons as I go through the store.  This makes couponing less embarrassing for me (since I don’t want to be super obvious, and I definitely don’t want to make people wait in line forever at the register).

I’ve got a few pages in my binder for recording prices on staples at different stores, as well as a master list of cleaning tasks for each room (my very literal 12 year old likes to consult them to see “exactly” what he is responsible for doing).

I don’t keep a calendar in this binder, because I find my phone calendar to be much more useful – I have it with me all the time and it REMINDS me of things (which has saved my bacon more than once!)  I also don’t have things like addresses, or birthday reminders or take out menus or bills or some of the other things I have seen a household notebook be used for.  I’ve got “systems” for those other things that work.  For this I wanted someplace to manage the two things we’ve struggled with lately – keeping the house liveable, and feeding ourselves everyday (as well as saving some money on the food buying).  It’s been pretty successful (though the kitchen remodeling has definitely distracted me!).

So that’s that…