New Year's Resolutions:

It is that time again, resolution time.  After a year filled with health issues and money issues and all kinds of crazy awful things, I am going for some simple, life improving resolutions this year.

1)  Blog here and in my homeschooling blog weekly
2)  Pay closer attention to my own health
3)  Be more intentional about lesson planning, and lesson implementation
4)  Spend time outside with the kids every day it is safe to do so,  unfortunately today does not qualify as the wind chill is below zero
5)  Spend more active time with the kids
6)  Practice yoga weekly
and lastly
7)  Continue to organize the house, and simplify, make it easy to keep clean and organized

The best tool I have found over the past years to keep myself organized is a daily binder.  I am a paper and pencil girl, and an electronic organization system simply does not work for me, I have tried.  If that works for you, awesome, more power to you.  Me, not so much.  So here are some of the most boring pictures ever, of my daily binder with helps me so much.

This binder allows you to put papers in for a cover and inner cover, so on the cover I made a Word document with all the birthdays and anniversaries and special days I need to remember.  I still forget to send cards but I am working on it!  On the inner cover I have our daily routine as a reminder of things I need to complete and a general idea of how I want our typical days to go.  Now we don't follow this on a regular basis, but the guidelines are there.

My tabs are as follows: Daily, Kitchen, Chores, Fitness, Homemade toiletries, and articles/lifestyle/etc.

In the daily page protector/cover of section I have our monthly budget to remind myself of bills and savings and monetary limits.  I also place any coupons or groupons or important notes and business cards here.  The daily section is what I use most often.  First is my weekly menu.  I made a spreadsheet that I print and fill in with pencil for the week.  Having a weekly menu helps me plan ahead for things like soaking beans, making sure I have bread made, meat thawed, and to always know ahead what I am making.  I use an excel file, which I attempted to publish at google docs here:  Menu I hope this link works, as I have never tried to publish a google doc.  Please let me know if it works or doesn't.  This is what it should look like :)

Also in this section is my daily planner.  I have a word file a week at a time, one page per day.  Every Monday has the same template, every Tuesday the same, etc.




I tried to put this in google docs too, here is hoping it works.
 daily planner


Also in my daily section I have some important medical reminders and similar items.

The next section is kitchen.  I place the extra menu templates in the page protector at the start of the section.  Then I have a grocery shopping template, lists of farmers markets, ideas for cooking with kids, simple healthy recipes I use often, and information on sprouting seeds.

The next section is chores and here I have printouts of what needs to be done in the house.  I have a list of ideas from 4 weeks to a more organized home, check Money Saving Mom for that.  moneysavingmom.com is a great website.  Then from http://www.home-storage-solutions.101.com I printed monthly calendars of projects to declutter your home in 15 minutes a day.  I really love this series because it is simple, it is not an instant fix, and it has super clear directions.   Also in this section are my homemade cleaner recipes and articles on decluttering and cleaning.

Fitness section has articles, exercise routines given to me by my chiropractor, and various forms of encouragement to move.

Homemade toiletries is full of tutorials and recipes for those things.

At the end I have articles, stories, pictures, all about things that interest and inspire me.  Gardening, crafting, simplifying life, making more natural choices.  It is a place for me to keep things I want to remember or reference.

I keep a pencil and highlighter in my binder, and most days you will find it open on the chair next to me at the kitchen table.  It has been such a help to me, because I always feel so accomplished crossing those tasks off the list.  It reminds me of the important things I need to do to keep my house presentable and running.  It also reminds me to keep joy and creativity in my days.  Plus it just makes it so I don't have to remember everything.  It helps me write down goals and achieve them without making it overwhelming, a big help to this momma.  Happy New Year everyone, hope it is filled with the important things in life!