I've been meaning to make a family organizational binder for awhile now. It's recommended by a lot of people for emergency preparedness...everything you need should disaster strike, all in one spot. Disaster struck in the form of Liliana's preschool registration. :-) "Where's her shot record? What's our doctor's address? Don't we have her physical form somewhere? Shoot, now I need her birth certificate!" Jeremy has all of this stuff "organized" in our file cabinet (sense the sarcasm). He has some weird system that makes perfect sense to him, but no one else could ever find anything. He actually has folders unlabeled because "if someone broke into our house, then they couldn't steal our identity. Because they couldn't find it." Nice. I can't find it either.
Now I can!
Our binder is organized into the following manner:
Copies of things like our driver's licenses, teaching certificates, etc. List of previous addresses. Resumes...and so on.
Financial-
A list of all of our bills, how we pay the bill, when it's due, what address it gets sent to, etc. Jeremy takes care of this stuff and should anything ever happen to him, I wouldn't have had a clue where to start...now it's listed out for me. Also, most recent retirement account statements go here. When we get a new one, we file the old one and put the new one in the binder.
Household-
Inventories (pantry, freezer, kids' clothes, etc.), Menu ideas, Cleaning schedules/checklists, anything I need to make our house run smoothly.
ALL Schedules-
If Jeremy gets a schedule (preaching, committee meetings, confirmation, etc.), he is to immediately make a copy of it for me. I enter the dates into my planner as well, but sometimes I think something isn't important, and then later want to reference it. Same with things like the kids' Sunday School schedule. I probably don't need to enter into my calendar what they are learning about each week, but a situation might occur where I want to reference it.
School Information-
Class handbooks, school policies, copies of preschool contracts, etc.
Health-
Shot records, growth charts, physical forms for everyone
Emergency-
List of all of the numbers in our cell phone contacts. Should we ever be stuck without a charged phone, I can still find the numbers I need. Username/Passwords list. Should we get organized enough to make a detailed emergency plan, it would go here.
Misc.-
Take out menus, random paperwork I'm not sure where else to put but I feel I need at my fingertips anyways.
Plus...how pretty!!!
Want to make one of your own? Here are some sites with more ideas and FREE printables for your binder!
Wow! Will you do mine? :)
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