Mom Hacks Monday - My Happy Book

I'd love to introduce you to my house organization binder!  This isn't a new concept.  Search Pinterest and you will find several such binders.  I am sharing my incarnation because it is what I have tweaked to work for me and my family, and I've incorporated some easy things into it that make our days much easier.

This is my happy book!

My happy book usually lives on the kitchen counter, opened to one of the following pages.

This is our daily chores page.  We've got the same list of daily chores that we need to go through day after day, and keeping track of what everyone has or hasn't done at any given point in a day can get a little overwhelming sometimes.  So, I wrote down each of our daily chores, side by side, and popped the sheet into a page protector.  Instant daily to-do list!  I can use a dry erase marker or crayon and mark off what has been done, and erase the entire thing in the morning and start over again.  Bonus, the kids love marking off their own chores and I've slipped in a little sight reading for Sofi.

Our weekly page comes next.  Each day has it's own section marked on the page, with a spot for what we are having for dinner, and a blog post idea.  I also wrote down the weekly chores on this page.  I do laundry daily, but I've sorted the type of laundry I do to specific days of the week so that I can stay on top of it and no one runs out of underwear.  The type of laundry to wash each day is written on the page as well.  I slipped that page into a page protector as well, and I can write in my weekly plans in dry erase marker as well.  Some people would have printed this out in all manner of fancy fonts and made a free download of it so that you could have your own.  But I haven't unpacked my printer yet, so I wrote it by hand on this cute paper (that I've been saving for like 8 years now for the perfect project).

Next, a sheet of lined paper slipped into a page protector, to write my random to-dos on.  I can write and erase easily again.  Just think how much paper we are saving here, folks!

Then I added these awesome hand made tabs!  I have sections in my book for a homeschool calendar and time record, notes, homeschool planning, meal planning, hospitality, finances, garden planning, gift and birthday planning, Christmas planning, contacts, a price book, and animal records.

My homeschool record currently looks like this, although I think I may tweak it a bit when I run out of the weeks I have already printed.  In Ohio, we have to cover 900 hours and several core subjects each year.  So, I use this space to simply jot down what we have worked on throughout the day, and how much time we spent on it.  I don't have to detail it, but I can simply jot down different conversations we've had, etc.  At the end of each day, after the kids are in bed, I add up our minutes for the day and write it at the bottom of the column.  We have a goal of 148 minutes per day, and we typically blow that away.  At the end of the week, I add up our daily totals for a weekly total, and jot it in the corner.  I keep track under that of our year to date minutes, so I add this week's to the week before and jot it down.  Easy peasy record keeping, and easily lets me look back over past lessons and activities to see progress etc, as well.

These are the pages I use most.  My notes section simply houses loose leaf notebook paper for lists, quick notes, etc.  Under homeschool planning, I have my copy of the laws for the state of Ohio, along with all of my correspondence with the school district and our letter excusing us from compulsory attendance.  Meal planning houses calendars where I write what I've planned or made for dinner.  I keep the past months for future ideas!  Under hospitality, I keep track of whom we have invited over for dinner, when they came, what foods they may be allergic to, like or dislike, and what we served them.  Finances houses the budget, gardening is my planning space for what the garden will grow in a year, and theoretically a map of what grew where last year.  Gift and birthday planning has records of who I need to buy gifts for, and what I have bought or made for them.  Christmas planning has a list of who I send holiday cards to, plans for crafting or buying gifts, stocking stuffers, what has and hasn't been bought yet.  My contacts are pretty self explanatory.  My price book compares prices on the same product at different stores or co-ops so that I can tell when a sale is a good sale and if it is worth driving across town to get a different price on a product.  Animal records has a separate sheet for each animal in the house (and eventually on the farm) detailing their personal and medical history, where they came from, etc.

And in the front lives my three ring pencil bag with my dry erase markers, pens, sharpies and a highlighter so they are always easy to find.

So, this is how I keep track of what needs to be done in my life, and where I'm at!  I love my happy little book.

Do you have a happy book?  What do you use it for?