Calendars, school papers, emergency information, schedules, phone numbers… Do all of the “little things” you have to remember make you feel like a human Rolodex? Put your mind at ease and centralize all of the kids papers, home checklists and neighborhood phone trees in one location where everyone can find it. Watch this video to learn how to build your own family information binder.
(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/TCDFamily.)
Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today we’re going to talk about what I call the Family Binder. Now, this is something that holds all of the reference information you need to help you with school and life and medical emergencies and all of that. It’s the stuff that you get home from school, you don’t know exactly where to put it because you might need it for later. This is where you put it. Also, what’s common to the things in this binder is that they need to often be shared with other family members. So instead of you having it only on your cell phone or your computer, other people in the family might actually need to reference this stuff too. So, you’ve got it in one centralized place in what we call the Communication Station of your home. And everybody can just go right to it without having to holler “Mom” and ask you. So this should save you a lot of that aggravation.
This one actually, we sell in our store, but let me tell you, it is really easy to make your own. You can use any three-ring binder you have. I would suggest if you’re going to buy the dividers that you should get extra wide dividers. They do sell these in office supply stores. They stick out just a little farther than normal dividers, so if you put sheet protectors or some large papers in here, you can still read the tabs along the side.
So here are some things that you might want to put in this kind of binder. Frequently used numbers, like the number to grandma’s house or some of your family friends that people call often in the house. You might want to put in the school bell schedule and the bus schedule. You might have the holiday calendar for school so you’ll know when Spring Break is. Any information about your carpool participants and the schedule for the carpool. Daycare, childcare policies, home maintenance information, such as water filter changes and air filter changes. You might have a section where you have all information about the kids, so their medical information, their clothing sizes, all of that stuff that you can never quite remember in your head, and your spouse certainly probably doesn’t remember either. You can have travel checklists in here, the things that you like to bring out to the beach, the things that you like to pack in the car for picnics. Whatever those things are for you, if you frequently refer to it, you might want to make this kind of family binder.
Now, again, we sell this in our store. If you want to see this, it’s at clutterdiet.com/products. (Update August, 2016: This product is no longer available, please contact us at service@clutterdiet.com for updated information.) And, again, if you want to make your own, that’s very easy to do. We actually have some instructions that might help you in our Member Area. And anybody can be a Member for free for 14 days with our Quick Start Program. So you can check that out at clutterdiet.com/quickstart.
See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
You may have been searching for how to keep track of important information.
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