Home and Kitchen Organization

When I posted about our school notebooks a couple weeks ago. I mentioned that I had also made one for the kitchen/home. I'm FINALLY getting around to posting the details about that. Several years ago I set up a "household notebook" with recipes, home information etc. BUT it was a 3 ring binder, and I just do not like 3 ring binders. I like the convenience, but not the bulk. And I was never good about keeping it up to date. Now that I have my handy dandy pro-click binding system, AND the awesome 2010 Schoolhouse Planner I decided it was a good time to make a new kitchen notebook. I started out to just have it be a recipe book, but then, it occurred to me that w/o the bulk of the 3 ring binder, this would be a great place to keep other forms that people might need to find if I wasn't around, and such. So, I turned it back into a household binder of sorts.

I decided since this will be in the kitchen when we're cooking, to just put everything in page protectors. That way I don't have to worry about spills.

At  some point I might decide to make a pretty cover of somesort, but for now, the cover is the Kitchen Conversion Cheat Sheet from the 2010 Schoolhouse Planner  This is so handy to have easily accessible, when you're cooking. Especially if you're like me and often want to double or halve a recipe.

The next pages are also out of the 2010 Schoolhouse Planner. The first is a page (not shown) is a page of important phone numbers. Next are 2 pages of family health information (the pink is just because our printer was acting up). I hadn't filled it out yet when I took the pictures, but it includes insurance information, doctor & dentist information, etc. *I* may not use this information often, the phone #s are already in my phone and such, but I figure these pages (the phone numbers and the health information) could be helpful to a babysitter or the girls if I was hurt, or whatever. Just good to have it all in one place, easy to find.

Next in the book is a garden planning checklist. This one I plan to use IN the page protector and mark things off with a wet erase (overhead projector) marker. That way I can re-use it from year to year. I also included a page for "Our Pet's Health Log" to keep track of the cats' health information (something I was never good about doing for our dog, figure this way I have a fighting chance LOL). And a general To-Do List. Not sure how often I'll use this, but getting ready for a specific event or something, I can use this with a wet erase marker and have it handy.

Family Chore Chart is a cool form I found in the 2010 Schoolhouse Planner. I was able to personalize it across the top with all of our names, and then the days of the week are down the left side. I wrote our normal chores on the paper itself (I could have typed them in like I did the names, but was in a hurry to get everything printed and didn't think of that. Besides, I'm weird, and kind of like handwriting things sometimes LOL) and then use a wet erase marker for chores specific to any given week. The girls still have their small portable chore charts, but this is something to refer to when they forget them, and keeps everything in one place. The other page in this picture is a Food Inventory Log. I haven't filled this out yet, but it gives space to keep track of what is in the pantry & freezer. My thought with this is to write the basics straight on the paper and then write amounts, and unusual items on the page protector with a wet erase marker. But my pantry & freezer are such a mess it will be quite the job, someday I'll get around to it, until then, the page is there reminding me, hee hee.

The last planner pages I used were Weekly Menu Planners.  I included 5 of these. We've been traveling so much that I haven't done anything with them yet. But my plan is to use them for regular menu planning. If I'm including a recipe that I know we all like, I'll write that on the paper, if I'm trying new recipes, I'll write it on with a wet erase marker. Over time, I hope to have 5 weeks of pre-planned menus, then I can just take a week, and go over it with a wet erase marker and change anything specific to that week (meals we won't be home, or whatever). Easy-Peasy. Since I'll also have all the recipes in this same book it means that if I were sick and someone else was staying with the girls, they could take over the menu planning with almost no effort & have meals the girls & dh will eat.

The last section of the book is the actual recipes. I'm just typing these in Word. I have them by category (Breakfast, bread, etc) and am including the recipes that we use frequently.

This book was so handy to have for our Williamsburg trip. We stayed in a friend's timeshare so had a kitchen and were able to make most of our meals. So nice to just grab this book and bring it along and I had all the recipes I needed for the meals we had planned.

On a related note, I wanted to mention that TOS has just launched a whole line of STUDENT Planners. Since we already had the girls' school notebooks made for this year, and they don't do much independent work at this point, I opted not to get one this year, but these look like great products, I suspect we'll be getting it as the girls get older. You can see them here.