Getting Organized: Family Planner

Well, I haven’t yet abandoned my New Year’s resolution to get organized.  What’s that you say?  It’s only the 8^th of January?  I know – I’m doing really well this year!

I thought maybe I should take a bit of time to consider the big picture.  In an effort to manage all of the small 30 minute projects, the inevitable pile-up of paper, dates and appointments to track, and so on, I thought a larger planning tool might be in order.  

There are tons of tools online to help you design and create your own planning binder.  And as you’re probably realizing – I LOVE organizational tools!   So I created my own.

I used some of the planers I found online as inspiration. I used some of the free printables from The Organized Home and modified others in order to suit our family’s needs.  Once I decided which pages I wanted to include, and broke it down into sections:

Family Planner Outline *Items highlighted in red indicate templates used from organizedhome.com
Section 1: Contact info	Emergency info, phone numbers, restaurant and take-out info (including menus)
Section 2: Chores	Daily, weekly, monthly checklists and schedules, seasonal lists
Section 3: Menus and Shopping	Monthly and weekly menu planners, shopping list, coupon section, and a list of product prices so I know when things are on sale
Section 4: Finances	List of bills to be paid monthly with dates each come due, monthly budget, budgets for special projects (not complete)
Section 5: Important Dates	A pocket for cards, a list of birthdays and anniversaries broken down by month
Section 6: Travel	Pre-travel checklist, road trip packing list, a pocket for printouts of hotel/camping confirmations and an itinerary

  

The page I was most pleased with was the grocery list.  I went through and organized it according to the geography of my favourite store – life is short, I don’t want to spend more time than necessary buying groceries!

Each section got its own binder divider, and each page got a page protector – I know, I spared no expense!

If you’re interested in having a look at the pages I used, and modifying them to suit your needs, just download from HERE and use them as templates.

I’ll keep you posted as to the success of the binder in keeping me organized.  I’m sure there will be pages I have to add (for example, the monthly budget we haven’t yet completed), and maybe some I decide to remove.

~ Shannon