31 Days To Better Domestic Service: The Home Management Journal

If you’ve ever wished you had a resource for everything related to your house care and maintenance, daily life and meal planning then this is the book for you. Sure it takes a bit to get started and developed but once you have one in place you’ll find your life to be so organized, together and efficient. What I’m talking about is the Home Management Journal. It’s also called the Home Binder, the Home Care Journal, The Control Journal and the Home Blessing Binder, a well as a few others. It is the tool that an organized home can’t live without.

The Home Management Binder is a physical or digital collection of chore lists, tasks, calendars, reminders, important information, meal planning, recipes and so much more. The overarching purpose of a home management notebook or binder is to build a command central that holds all of the information anyone in the family needs regular access to; however, there are many different ways that individual families use their notebooks. Trust me, you’ll find a lot of uses for the Binder that you currently have spread all over the home. The overarching purpose of a home management notebook or binder is to build a command central that holds all of the information anyone in the family needs regular access to; however, there are many different ways that individual families use their notebooks.Putting them in one place will be an ah-ha moment. In this series I’m going to talk about both types of Journals. I started my home management with a physical journal and have since moved it to almost all digital using Evernote and Google Calendar.

 Do You Need One?

That’s a good question! Are you always doing chores? Do you forget to schedule your car maintenance? When was the last time you clean the tops of the fan blades? How about meal planning? Do you have a stockpile? Are you always running to the store for things you forgot? Learning to use a Home Management Journal can help you stay on top of all of these things and more. Families with more than one child, or if both partners are working full time, using a Home Management Journal could help both of you run the house better and stay on top of cleaning and routine maintenance.

I like the idea of having a tab in the binder for babysitters. You could have emergency numbers, medications the kids take, ideas for snacks and the nearest neighbor to call for help (or how to get a hold of you).

Here’s a list of other sites and blogs that are talking about Home Management Journals:

• Using a Home Management Journal
• Building Your Control Journal
• The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Home Management Notebook
• Household Notebook: Planning for an Organized Home
• My Home Management Binder by Imperfect Homemaking

Tomorrow I’ll talk about how to build a physical Home Management Journal; from the tabs that are commonly used, where to find free printables you can use to make your journal pretty and what it should contain. Let’s get excited!

Activity

For tomorrow’s post, I would like you to make a list of the things you wish you had in a central location. This could be an information board, recipes, emergency lists, birthday lists, cleaning checklists, maintenance schedules, stockpile lists and so much more. Start thinking about how you’d like to organize your home so that everyone will know where to find that important information. What are some things you keep losing that you’d like to be able to find quickly?

Check out the sites mentioned above also to develop your own ideas. Then come back tomorrow and learn how you can put it all together!

Do you have a Home Management Notebook? Have you wanted to make one but wasn’t sure where to start? What works well for you? What doesn’t? I’m curious.