Horde-Be-Gone!

I have recently decided that, this house needs to be better organized! This sounds fairly straightforward, right? Not so fast! Prior to me moving into the Hubmeister’s abode, said Hubmeister had lived happily as a semi-hoarder. Every available cabinet/shelf/closet/room was full of stuff – stuff that he had barely/never used but nonetheless “needed”.  

For a long time, all I could get him to do was to move stuff from one place to another (kind of like that puzzle game from childhood, where you have to move one piece at a time until the picture is complete). So, slowly (painfully slowly) I have bent Hubmeister to my will school of thought and we have finally purged a great deal from his dark days of hoarding.

With all of this new found real estate, I have finally gotten the Hubmeister to give me 4 huge shelves in what used to be the garbage/recycling closet and is now officially a pantry (Gasp!). He also built a lovely two sectioned cabinet in the kitchen to house the garbage/recycling and pots, pans, and Tupperware. With the introduction of the pantry, this freed up an entire 3 shelf cabinet that is now mainly storage for baby bottles and other baby food paraphernalia. PROGRESS!

My next goal is to go through all of the remaining kitchen cabinets and purge/organize them. Two whole (3 shelf) cabinets are used almost solely for storing the cooking appliances that I barely use. A lot of these items are not cheap but still, I barely use them. I guess it is going to come down to purge or vow to start using them. Another 3 shelf cabinet is used exclusively for liquor and cocktail glasses and let me assure you, dear reader, that bad boy is going nowhere! ;)

Another goal that I have had in mind for a very long time is a household notebook. You know, kind of like the master manual for the house. So, when something goes wrong with the new fridge, instead of freaking out, trying to remember where the hell we put the warranty info, we will know exactly where it is.

The sections I think I would include, in no particular order, would be:

·         Daily Tab (Each day’s to-do list transferred from main to-do list, days goals etc…)

·         Emergency info

·         House Management and Maintenance (cleaning schedule and chore checklists, home inventory and other insurance info, car maintenance schedules, warranty information, vehicle records)

·         Home Improvement Projects (Ideas, estimates, business cards etc…)

·         Family Goals (and steps to achieving those goals, formatted as checklists)

·         Phone numbers

·         Health Records (Human and Pet)

·         Planning (to-do lists, calendars, etc…)

·         Money (budget/spending, bills, credit card list, utilities/services directory)

·         Menu planning (including freezer cooking plans, regular menu plans, special occasion menus, freezer inventory, shopping lists, take out menus etc…)

·         School (school information, school schedules, special events, and holiday lists, carpool schedules, lunch menus etc…)

·         Travel and Activities

·         Misc.

There are so many versions on the web, I’m not sure which way I’m going to go quite yet.

Have you made a Home Management binder or something similar? What sections do you use and what’s inside of those sections? Do you use printables you found on the net or did you design your own? Tell me about it!