Homemaking Notebook

Homemaking Notebook -Photos-
Crystal Miller

Well I have my homemaking notebook together, pretty much anyway. I spent a lot of time looking at websites and looking at different planners and various ways that planners are used and divided up into sections. In the end I narrowed down what I uniquely desired in a notebook. Every family is different and everyone may need a planner for different reasons. So after all my research I created my own planner that covers specifically what I need to help me stay organized. I needed my planner to help keep my household chores planned out and detailed, my kitchen menus, grocery lists and pantry lists in one location that makes it easy for me to use, and have my homeschooling assignments for my kids set up month by month.

Here is what I have so far (I am sure I will continue to do a lot tweaking). I keep my notebook open on my kitchen counter for easy access and find I am accessing it all day long! ~smile~ :

This section is for the household organization. I have a master list of all my household chores written down room by room. From this list I broke the chores down into daily to-do's and put them in page protectors. Now I don't spend so much time figuring out what needs to be done on a daily basis:

If you would like to see a breakdown of my chores you can see that here:

Cleaning Lists

I also have a section for our month at a glance so I can jot down appts and info I don’t want to forget (like what day of the month I put in my Azure order and when we pick it up or what day of the month the kids Wyld Life club meets), We do not have a lot of outside activities so I don’t have a lot to keep track of. I know the kids youth group meets on Sunday night, so I don't write this down.

I also added a section for phone numbers. Seems I always looking for telephone numbers and this makes it easy for me to find my most often called numbers... which are my kids mostly! LOL..

Then in the kitchen section I have my monthly menu and grocery lists and pantry lists. I put my monthly menu planning calendar in a page protector so I can easily access it to see what I planned for dinner each day. Right next to that is my “grocery list” page. I can easily refer to the menu and write down any grocery items I need for the week and because I leave the notebook in the kitchen on the counter I can add to the list throughout the week as I see needed items that need to be replaced:

I also have a pantry list section. In this section I have a copy of my basic pantry list and I put my master grocery lists in there too. Long ago I made up a ‘master grocery list’ for each store I shop at. I put a list together of everything I buy from that store and divided it into categories like baking supplies, condiments, fruits and veggies and so forth. I have an example of this on my website here. I need to update that list as there are a lot of things on it I no longer buy and things I currently buy that are not on there. But it will give you an idea of what my master list looks like. I use the master list to help me check stock of items I buy and jot down items I need to add to my grocery list.

My last section is my homeschooling section. I have one section that is where I write down assignments due so I don’t forget when I told the kids there paper on Australia is due! ~smile~ This is mainly for the classes that we do as a group.

Then I have section for each of the children and it has a month by month calendar with their individual classes and what needs to be done. This way I know we are on track for finishing their work by the end of the year.

Also of interest to some of you may be the calendar website I found. I really like it and have been printing my calendars from this site for my notebook: http://www.vertex42.com/calendars/ They are PDF files and can be saved right to your computer to use again and again.

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