My First Household Notebook

Since having a baby everything about my life has become way less manageable.  I have discovered that without routines and plans everything just falls apart despite my efforts.  And you know, all this is very normal.  This is what having a baby does.  It changes your life so you have to figure out what your new life needs to look like.  At first Mark and I struggled with this because we kept trying to go back to our "old life" with the addition of a baby.  But now, I think we are finally figuring out that the old life is gone.  And I can only speak for myself but I am learning and loving to embrace the new life, crazy and disorganized as it may be. 

Over the past few months since returning to work I've been pondering ways to become more organized and efficient.  So far here is what I have come up with:

1.  We hired someone to clean our house twice a month. 
2.  I realized that I needed to organize myself a little better and combine my many lists and calendars. 

With #2 came the discovery of Life As Mom and her fabulous ebook.  I purchased this a few months back and have been diligently working on using it to create my very first Household Notebook.

What is a Household Notebook you ask?  Great question!  If you "google" this phrase you will find all sorts of blogs and discussions on the topic.  Quite honestly every person's Household Notebook will be different based on what that person needs it to do for them.  For someone else it may include homeschooling plans or sports schedules but for me it is simply calendars, menu planning helps and weekly cleaning helps plus a few introspective pages to help me determine my priorities and set goals for each month or quarter.

I took my notebook to FedEx Office today and had it bound with a plastic cover so that it will hopefully make it through the year.  I also had them insert colorful pages to separate the months and I had already added tabbed index pages for each quarter.  Here are a few photos of my notebook (these aren't the greatest but you'll get the general idea):