Make a Household Notebook

In my experience, staying organized has helped me stay sane. I regularly use a desk calendar, a daily planner, a coupon binder, a household notebook and a large number of notebooks to keep my mind from getting lost in the shuffle of household management.

A household notebook serves the entire family, too, and not just my own needs. We're a family of five, much like many other families, and we juggle full schedules of working, child activities, household responsibilities and hobbies.

Materials:
+ One-inch binder with clear pocket viewers on the front and back
+ Hole puncher
+ Printer
+ Printer paper
+ Printer ink
+ Dividers
+ Ruled filler paper
+ Ultra-fine black sharpie or gel pen

Yes, I'm outlining the obvious here. I like to be thorough with everything. For my planning purposes, I found printables for the following sections of my household notebook:

+ Notebook front and back cover
+ Budget worksheets (I printed out enough for three months.)
+ Menu planning worksheets
+ Grocery shopping list worksheets
+ Pantry inventory worksheets
+ Freezer inventory worksheets
+ Weekly chore list

How we use our household notebook:
+ When the kids return home from school and complete their homework, they know what section of the household notebook to turn to for their chore list.
+ Before doing groceries, I turn to the menu planning section to plan out three weeks worth of meals and then I go to the inventory sections to cross-reference everything before making my shopping list.
+ My husband and I work on the budget worksheets together since we're both income-earners in our two-income household.
+ We use the ruled filler paper to create lists of other things to remember, phone numbers that need to be entered into our phones, or other notes.

As you can see, this notebook is a resource for the entire family. The menu planning worksheets are also helpful when I'm too sick to cook or I'm away so the family isn't at a complete loss when dinnertime rolls around. We've also seen a reduction in our grocery bill, by about half, since we started implementing the inventory worksheets.

The best defense when creating your household notebook is finding printables that best suit your family and your household's needs. OrganizedHome.com my go to resource for printables to place in my household notebook, as well as The Krazy Coupon Lady for shopping list and coupon notebook printables.