Maintaining My Home Management Binder

It's a great thing to have a home management binder. It reminds me of my days as the office manager at our church when I used to go everywhere with my planner (or as I jokingly called it, "my brain"). It can make you feel more centered, more in control of your day and the goings-on of your family. But...it's pretty much useless, if it's not organized in such a way that you can actually utilize the information contained therein. I know this from experience.

About a year ago, when I originally got inspired to make my home management binder, I put in a few forms, some checklists, and then added some recipe clippings to that since I love cooking and baking. (I kind of have a ridiculous obsession with finding new recipes to try). Anyway, somewhere in there, I had gotten out of the habit of maintaining my binder. Needless to say, I didn't really use it anymore, except for a catch-all for my recipes found online or in magazines or wherever. It had no purpose; it was just a clutter magnet for my kitchen.

Recently, I had been seeing more and more posts on different blogs about home management binders. I got inspired again. I pulled out my binder a few weeks ago and knew that I had some work ahead of me. It was a mess. I'm happy with the progress I made, even though I still have more to do to make it totally workable for me. But at least it's a start...

• I started by pulling out all those recipes. I went through each one, and I realized there were several that I never actually used. The ones I did use, I placed in a pile to be organized.

• Then, I got to clippin'. I trimmed out unnecessary parts of the paper, as shown so that I could fit as many recipes as possible into my binder. 
• I used some of those adhesive photo refill pages to organize my recipes. I managed to fit 2-3 on a page. 
• My recipe pages are now organized by soups, main dishes, special dishes for a crowd (like church potlucks or holiday dinners) and children's favorites (like granola bars, etc). 

I still need to get some more pages, so I can also organize my massive collection of dessert recipes (still growing, now that I'm on Pinterest!)

Anywho, I had a lot of trash when I was done. (I hope no environmentalists are reading this! Lol!)

I found some helpful forms here, and printed them and added them to my binder like so: 

By the way, I'm using the Daily Docket and the Master Weekly Checklist from the above link. I'll probably add some more of these free printables gradually, so as not to overwhelm!

Basically, it's more functional now. And that's a good thing. Right now, I need all the help I can get! Now, if I can just stick with it, I think I'll be in business! Though, these days, I'm trying to be a little more forgiving of myself, since this little person is not allowing me to operate at my usual pace (that's okay!). 

Have you ever gotten off track from your organizational endeavors? How did you get back into the swing of things?