Household Control Journal

How do you order your life?
Fifteen minutes at a time!

Here is the deal. If you will take just 15 minutes once a day for a week or 15 minutes several times a day, this time next week you will be singing a song of joy. Planning order in  your life may come naturally or you may have to really work on it. Deciding what you want from your life DOES take some time to figure out. That is where your journal will help.

Let me start over. My life is beyond crazy busy. I home school, own 2 businesses that I am very actively involved with, do competitive sports activities with 3 of my children (soccer, baseball, track, football, Futsal), organize and facilitate a local home school group, lend a helping hand to my elderly and handicapped parents on both sides of the family, work out daily, cook from scratch and pretty much run this household on my own. My dear Lumber Jack is a blessing to me when he can be but, our work is seasonal. Often he is up at 4 AM and getting ready for his day, only to return home exhausted for dinner, a shower and a little bit of time with the kids before he heads to bed. During the winter time I am blessed with his company 24/7 so a little bit of a break is OKAY!

I have a need that may be different than you. For me, there is no easy way to separate what needs to be done for the family and what needs to be done with the business. Everything but the bills are kept together for simplicity and scheduling.

Let's take a look at how I order my life. Maybe in some small way, you will find something that will help you to make your days smoother and more productive.

This is my Case it. For the particular job it's perfect for me. 

 The Case it has double 3 ring binders. This is open to the middle. All of this takes up about 5 inches.

 My day planner  is the most used item in my portfolio of tools.

 The black case it with red stripes is my main holder for all things personal and often used.

In the middle I have a pencil pouch that holds pens, markers, highlighters, post it notes and coupons.

This red binder is my secondary tool. I keep my lesser used forms in this binder.

Behind this last Case it I keep several see through plastic sleeves.

Let me show you the meat and potatoes of our daily operations. Like I said before, our daily planner is used and loved. This is my month at a glance. The things I keep on this page are NOT day to day activities. For example: games, Dr. Appointments, Co-op dates, field trips and visitors would all be added here. This is especially useful when I am trying to plan something special or out of the ordinary.

This is the current weeks day to day pages. I use removable post it notes to block of certain times in my day. I have a couple key areas that MUST be visited each week. If you look closely you will see that the Lumber Jack and I meet twice a week about finances. Other times set aside are paperwork, groceries, house blessing (cleaning), & unscheduled games. I keep a small colorful envelope attached to the top so I can add any activities as well. Recently I had the topics of taxes, Once a Month cooking, and time set aside to stay with a friends baby at the hospital.

 Once I have my big items in place I then micro manage our schedules. I made it a point to set an exact time for a couple of things. Morning routines, laundry, Whats for Dinner? (WFD), laundry again, and finally dinner. I do have some wiggle room. However, if I don't take something out to defrost on time then I can't feed my family. If I don't do at least 2 loads of laundry every day then by the weekend I have to dedicate 16 hours of time I don't have to getting caught up.

Not everyone will like the same formats. I searched for the planner I have used forever and a day and Office Depot no longer carries it. I was heartbroken. I just adapted this one because it had great bones. I love the tabbed months. When you are in a hurry and need to get something written down before you forget it, turning easily to that page is a plus. When you turn to the tabbed month you get the month at a glace and behind those are each of your weeks broken into 15 minute segments. Do you remember me posting about 15 minutes at a time? This was important to me!

 Now, leaving the planner lets look at some of my other tools. Here are legal sized envelopes that I ran through my printer. I don't know about your house, but at mine I keep all of my receipts. I have to do this for businesses and it just over flowed to my budgeting for the home. I started with month and week. For example March week 3. At the end of each month I will pull them all together and file them away. I keep track of the date, place, amount, if it was cash or debit (C/D), a budget buster (BB) or planned (P). If I see TOO many (BB) marks I hide it from the Lumber Jack! Just kidding! It does help me be more accountable though. I keep these in the pocket for binder 1.

 On the left hand side bottom I keep paper clips, my favorite pen and a personal calendar. Because I don't want to share my weight, measurements or stats with anyone I put them in this little book. I also use it to mark the days I work out and if I am not feeling the best.

This is my morning routine. I separated each one of these inside the binder by a see though divider. the first section is my morning routine. These can be found on the Fly Lady website somewhere. They are user created.

The next section are my 15 minute chores. I love the last one. It's pampering!

 I had to flip through my pages to find one I haven't used. This is a flylady worksheet that is part of a program called FACEing your finances. I keep an updated copy for each month and a running total of how much debt we have paid off year to date. I encourage everyone to take ahold of your finances and do something to get debt free!

Next up in this binder are those odd ball schedules and random emails for field trips that I need to deal with.

 Did I mention I really don't like to cook? NOR do I like to plan dinners. My next section has new recipes I have tagged on Cozi and added to my menu's. I keep all of the new meal recipes for the week together and once I am done I transfer them to the back binder since I don't need them again for a while.

 Practicing saving money... Yep, creating a menu and a shopping list. I actually have 8 weeks made out ahead of time and a master shopping list for each week. When the week is over I take it out and transfer it to my second binder and then add the upcoming week in this spot. The full shopping list is on the back of this clear plastic sleeve. I made multiple copies so I can just grab and go!

Finally at the back of my first binder I have 3 folders (one is missing in these pics). The first one is for business meetings, the second one is for a running personal checkbook ledger since I have desk checks I use for our home bills and the third one I share below. It's a running list of "pretending" you are a realtor and walk through your house. I choose one item each week to update, fix, repair, paint, or organize.

The pretend you are a realtor papers can be found on flylady as well.

This is my second binder. It hold all of the stuff that is important and I need access to but don't really need on a daily or hourly basis.

 I actually cleaned this out for the photo shoot. I had tons of papers from the hospital in here.

In the pink binder I have my goals for 2012. Because I listed several that were very sensitive and personal I am excluding my goal list from this shoot. My favorite on the list was "Have an affair with the Lumber Jack".

 The black folder is for all those loose ends I am going to get to... or things I need to hold on to. Permission slips, paper work for physicals, personal recommendations....

This is my schedule from Flylady. For the first month I printed them all off and added them to binder #1. Once completed I moved them to binder #2. I almost DARE the lumber Jack to ask me what I did all day long!

These are forms for my kids to use. Cleaning chores... Yes, we make our kids actually help around the house!

I created this form just for my absentmindedness. My children are often telling me they need to do something and for whatever reason only part of it actually makes it into Cozi. My part, like send money for a tournament, pick up a birthday card, purchase a secret santa present... well... That is why I have this form~!

I have more see through sleeves. This one is for emergency numbers for skilled tradesmen.

Lets talk about Cozi for a minute. With Flylady you can create a free account. If you don't have one, you are REALLY missing out. I create to-do's for each day and I can even email them straight to each of my kids' phones! I print mine off because that is how I like it. At the beginning of each week, The Lumber Jack gets an email telling him who is doing what at what time and which day. My kids are responsible to add every single activity to Cozi so I know where they are at all times. If it's not on Cozi, then it doesn't happen.

Probably one of the best tools in the world, and most beloved in my collection. On the left is my prayer journal for my husband and on the right, the current book I am reading for a woman's bible study. Words cannot express how important praying for your spouse is. I picked a particular journal with Paris on it for a reason. When I was a young bride I went to Paris as a Missionary. The Lumber Jack and I were not in agreement. It did cause quite a bit of turmoil in our household. This is my reminder to be sensitive to the season of life we are in and ALWAYS listen to GOD first!