motivating the Monday (a smidge late)

It's been one year and a week or so since we moved into our new house. Yes, we still call it our new house--except for Miles, who calls our home "Miles' house." In fact, when his older brothers try to call our home "Luke's house" or "Charlie's house", just to irritate him, they are successful and get screamed at! Yikes! I guess we keep calling our new house new kind of like we keep calling Baby Way, baby. He's coming up on a year now, so I know that's about to change. Or not. I can live in denial!

But back to it. We lived in our old house for 8 years. It was our first house. Prior to that, we lived in apartments and it was just hubby and me. No kids until we moved into our old house. So, when we decided to move last year (when I was pregnant with #4-yep), we had a LOT more stuff. 8 years + 3 kids kinda stuff. I asked a friend of mine, who has moved over 10 times in less than 10 years how on earth she did it. One of these days, she says she's going to write an e-book on it, but she told me to make a moving notebook/binder!

Score!! I'm all about binders and notebooks! I wrote a post about creating a family notebook here and a Christmas notebook here. So, I quickly hopped to creating our moving binder! And even now, one year and a week or so after we moved and renovated our kitchen, with all new appliances, our double oven decided to break. Bam! No warning. Just zero power. But, thanks to my handy moving binder, I was able to look up model #'s and serial #'s and phone numbers of people to contact to come fix our oven! Before this notebook idea, I promise you, I wouldn't have been able to find any of it! So, in the event that you are moving or renovating or trying to keep your family organized or celebrating Christmas ever in your life, and need a little motivation to get organized, I highly suggest a notebook/binder to help you stay on top of things!

Moving Notebook must-haves. . .

1. Well first you need an actual binder. I lean toward 3 ring binders with 2 inside pockets. It seems my other binders start the same way. . .

2. For my moving notebook, I had 4 dividers with index tabs. In front of my first divider I printed off months of the calendar for appointments I needed to keep track of. For example, I had dates of home inspections, contractor meetings, closing date, moving date, etc. It also became my official calendar for end of school functions and my dr. appts for baby #4!

3. Next I labeled my dividers. My first tab is labeled as our old address. Behind it, I have our purchase and sale agreement copy, the flyer we used to sell our old house, the receipt from our air conditioning service and other repairs we agreed to do on our old house for our buyers. Basically anything having to do with our old house was kept here. The second tab is labeled packing/moving. Behind this I have every phone call I made to moving companies to compare quotes, dates, etc. We had to move out of our old house and live elsewhere for 3 weeks while our new house was being renovated. So our moving process got a little hairy! I had to get several quotes from movers who could come out once and then come back. I also kept packing checklists and tips for moving I found, etc. here. The third tab is labeled renovating/ideas. Here I have pages from magazines that have ideas for lighting, pulls/knobs, paint colors, designs and websites with ideas for the same thing. It was just a place to keep all inspiration that we liked as we designed our kitchen. And our fourth tab is labeled our new address. Here is where I have all of our appliance model #'s, furniture receipts and stores from which we purchased anything for our new house!

4. And finally, like I have in all of my other notebooks, I use a velcro or zip pouch! For this notebook I have business cards for contractors, stores, etc. and our paint swatches we used to paint inside our house! Keeps all the random itty bitty, yet important information together!

Leave it to our oven to break to inspire a motivating the Monday post!

FYI Friday!

October kinda snuck up on me with all the preparations for my sister's wedding on October 1st. This entire week after her wedding, we've all been decompressing and trying to get things back in order, catching up on sleep and our DVR (which we aren't loving since we started liking virtually no tv during the summer) and playing with the free time of fall break.

However, it is October, and we love the Fall! I am busy trying to soak up yummy smells and pumpkin season. But, something startled me this week. Know what it was? Not Halloween, though my almost 6 year old thinks it's hilarious to try to scare me with spiders and ghosts! Nope, it was that Christmas is less than 12 weeks away! Does that startle you? In the past, I hadn't had that feeling until about Dec. 8th, when there was less than 3 weeks until Christmas and I haven't done much shopping. But last year, with my 3rd little newborn in the mix (you may remember I was frazzled), I vowed to be on top of the Christmas season from now on! And so, I've created a Christmas binder, similar to our Family notebook.

This is nothing earth shattering, but I'm hoping it's going to help me! Maybe you too? Let me break it down. . .

--I have a binder. It's red, for the season! I also have 5 dividers. I got the kind I could write on the tabs and erase as I see fit. So far, I'm good.

--Before the first divider, I printed off the calendar months of October, November and December from this website. Yes, I think it's good to start getting my act together in October, when there is less hustle and bustle and I'm living in my dream land of caramel scents, pumpkin patches, cooler weather, warmer clothes, fall leaves, and comfort foods! I then started putting things on the calendar (special Christmas events we attend each year, perfect weekend for putting up our tree, Christmas programs, mailing cards, etc) just to get started. Obviously, this will fill up as the season approaches.

--My first divider is labeled TO DO. I have a sheet with things that need to be done. For example, buy or make wrapping paper, get supplies, buy Christmas stamps, make new Christmas CD, prepare Advent calendar, decorate, send off gifts, etc. etc.

--My second divider is labeled BUDGET. Yuck. Don't like it, but it needs to be done in our family. We have a long history of getting carried away and that's just not what the Christmas season is about. There is a Christmas budget worksheet you can print here as well. Something to work on this year and have nailed down for the next.

--My third divider is labeled IDEAS/RECIPES. If/when I see ideas for decorating or parties, or delicious recipes I want to make, I will put them here. I find them each year and think "OOOoooh I want to try that!" Then I forget about it when the time comes or can't find it. Pinterest comes in handy here, but jotting it down and having it in my binder/hands is the way I roll.

--My fourth divider is labeled CHRISTMAS CARDS. I have a spreadsheet of our Christmas card list, but ideally want to have addresses all right here too---rather than flipping through my old, scratched out twenty times, very small address book I use throughout the year. So, for now, my spreadsheet will work.

--My fifth divider is labeled THANK YOUS. My mom always taught me the importance of thank you's. Sometimes I fail, but I always try to return thanks and want to teach my boys the same lesson. Having a sheet to write things down as presents are opened is a good way to keep track!

There you have it. I may be adjusting this binder throughout the season. If I do, I will update. If you already have this kind of system in place, please share your thoughts and suggestions! And now I'm off to enjoy Fall!!!!!

family notebook

Last year I read the book, Steady Days, by Jamie C. Martin. It was a great little book, one full of ideas and inspiration on managing my days as a mom and wife. A book that has encouraged me to finally take steps toward getting more organized. I've always thought I am somewhat organized, yet I live in clutter. Though I've still not been able to rid our house of clutter, I've finally created a family notebook that holds important keys to our family's organization. That way, even when my counters are full of clutter, I still know where to go to find things!! My next step is getting rid of clutter so when my boys are asked one day down the road, what is one thing you remember your mom saying as you were growing up, it won't be "Why are our counters always SO cluttered?! You need to find homes for all of these. . ., etc. etc."

Do you see what I mean? Full disclosure obviously. . .

Anyway, here's what is in our family notebook in case you are in need of something like this as well. You may have something like this already, but it has been so good for me, I want to share. . .

First off, I found a 3 ringed, 2 pocket binder. In the front pocket of the binder I keep some character traits and Bible verses we'd love to see developed in our boys. Next, in the front of our notebook is 12 months of calendars printed and hole punched. That way, when I'm making appointments or recording special days at school or needing to plan date nights, I can put it on the calendar and have it right there. Chad can look at this too and update his calendar. I don't have a personal agenda that I carry with me---I have a thousand other things like diapers, sippy cups, Purell, kleenex, etc.etc. So, this one spot in our kitchen is perfect for us!

I then have 7 dividers with index tabs. The first is Phone Numbers. I have a list of phone numbers ranging from our parents, neighbors, church, schools, doctors, to every home maintenance number we call (air, garage, plumbing, car, pest, etc). On the back on that sheet are Take-Out numbers, so we don't have to look things up in a phone book. Saving steps is quite helpful these days! Additionally, though I do have most of these numbers in my cell phone, we are the family that still has a land-line, so I choose to use it when I'm home anyway.

Our nex tab is for birthdays. Though I created my own sheet, here is a site that has hundreds of free printables you can download, among lots of other helpful tips to family/home organizing! I'm very picky about fonts and the way things are laid out visually. I love this site for so many of the items I've used in our notebook.

Our third tab is for Bible verses. I chose it to be third because I had a yellow tab and that makes me think of joy! So, here is where I have written some verses I want to commit to heart as well as some for our boys to learn too.

Our fourth tab is our Odds & Ends Master Plan. I have a sheet, again that I found on the site above, that enables me to list things that need to be done around our house. So often, we come up with things that need to be done, but forget about, when we have time to do them. This can be a place to list things like, buy/change air filters, change lightbulbs, print pictures out for new frames, hang this or that, pull clothes down from the attic, etc. Just a place for me to list things I'd like for us to do or work on that I can get out of my cluttered head!

Our fifth and sixth tab are currently empty, but I plan on using one of them for articles I rip out of magazines that I want to keep and peruse later. I have so many old issues of magazines with dog-eared pages that I want to return to. Therefore I have TONS of magazines sitting around--that equals clutter! So, I can recycle my magazines after I rip those articles out! The other tab, I am planning on using for expenditures. For example, this site I keep mentioning has a printable for health records. I have written down every dr. visit we have had already this year (which in less than 2 months down, has been A LOT). This way, I can look back at the end of the year and know how about how much to budget for next year. Yes, I'm sure there are online ways of doing this--but handheld things seem to work better for me. I'm hoping this and recording other things will help us as we get on track with our budget!

Our last tab is for our Family Mission Statement. Chad and I worked on this at the end of last year. We're still working on it, but we have goals and verses and our family mission laid out. We have it under this tab, so we can go back to it and update it as we see fit!

Behind all of our dividers are 3 separate folders with pockets. One for each of our boys. They hold things like flyers or reminder papers that come home from school, school calendars, or papers with milestones or funny quotes on them, so I can remember to put them in the boys' scrapbooks.

Then finally, I have 3 separate velcro folders, also hole punched. The first contains stamps and note sheets for teachers. The second contains, take-out menus, the third contains coupons. 

Now that our family notebook is up and running, I am feeling more organized already. And though our house may still be cluttered (though that will hopefully will change, just you wait) at least my brain isn't!!