Lifetime Moms

Typically kept in a 3-ring binder, a home management notebook holds everything you need to run your household in one convenient location. Today, start thinking about the information you want to include in your notebook. Gather any papers you have scattered throughout your home — for example, those in your kitchen junk drawer or across the top of your desk — and begin sorting them into categories to get an idea of the type of information you regularly refer to.

One of the tips that was emphasized during both Office Max webcasts I attended (about organizing your home office and helping kids organize for back-to-school) is to color code your calendar, files, etc. so that each family member has their own color and everything can be easily filed or found by its color.

Let me first start by saying that I'm NOT a neat-freak. If anything, I have a tendancy to be a pack-rat. Second, we actually downsized from a, I'll call it what it was....a McMansion, when we moved into our current house and we redid just about every room with the profits from the sale of our Big Mac house.