I Need Help! Paper Piles

Monday, August 17, 2009, by Leigh Anne & Sherra

We're moving! Visit us at Find Your Sock Yarn and re-subscribe to get the latest updates. Your favorite features like Question of the Week, Words of Wisdom quotes and fun giveaways will be there. Archives will remain here for now. Thanks for visiting!

Photo courtesy of JustinLowery.com

We are changing things up for the next few Mondays. Instead of asking you a question, we are going to give you tips and ideas based on your great responses to our question from the first week.

Last week we gave you some meal planning tips and this week we are going to help you tackle those piles of paper!

Piles of paper seem to be a problem we all share.

As we discussed it and talked about what things help us manage our piles, we both discovered that one thing that we have both had since our children were very small is “The Family Binder” and they are very similar.

We encourage you to create a system that will work for you and your family and this is one that has worked well at both the Wilkes and Humphreys homes.

How to set up your own Family Binder

Key components are sheet protectors and a 3-ring binder. (We could write a separate post on why we think you can’t run a house without sheet protectors but we’ll save that for another day!)

It is especially important for all family members to know where the binder is kept…dads and children look really organized when mom isn’t home so they can come up with an important paper.

These are the things we keep in our 3-ring binders for easy access:

Copies of everyone’s social security cards
Copies of everyone’s health insurance cards
Phone list
Master forms

Phone list includes our full names and kids full names, doctors, pharmacy, cell phones, utilities, grocery, hairdresser, local restaurants, babysitters and family, friends and neighbors phone numbers.

Our master forms include:

Master grocery list
Master meal planning and shopping form
Babysitter form
Vacation checklist
Household chores and kids checklist
Medical Release Form

Leigh Anne says…
I learned the hard way how important a medical release form is when we were in Hawaii and one of our children ended up in the emergency room. A blank medical release form to be left with family members when parents are out of town in case of medical emergency is something you want to be sure to include.

Sherra says…
I always made sure any babysitter or family member knew where our Family Binder was kept (kitchen desk). I included tips I typed up for babysitters for reference if we were both traveling. I included these categories:

Telephone tips – How to retrieve voicemail
Television tips – TV remote instructions
Laundry tips and other general household tips

The back always had extra notebook paper for them to write down phone messages or notes to us.

Here are a few links with suggestions and systems for a family binder:

Excecutive Homemaker Binder Printables

Tips to organize your family binder

A tour of many different household notebooks

Household notebook printables library

If you’ve never put together a Family Binder, it’s a great time to start one!

Start Simple

The best system is the one that works FOR YOU!

You can adapt any of these ideas, print pre-made forms or make your own. It’s a starting place for your very own system to help you with your piles of paper so you can feel more organized and simplify.

We’d love to hear what works for you. Give us your best “piles of paper” tip below!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Share and Enjoy:

Related Posts:

Categories: Encouragement, Inspiration

Liked what you've read so far? Sign up right here & you'll get new stories when they are posted…

Subscribe to the RSS feed to get the latest articles

11 Comments »

11 Responses to “I Need Help! Paper Piles”

This is a great and useful idea, thank you.

I think our bulletin board sounds like it could be all put in a binder. That sure would tidy up our wall!

It seems like bills can be easily misplaced. As soon as they arrive, they are put in the to be paid place (still trying to figure that one out since I moved and have half the space now). Wedding invitations, graduation and things that need presents sent are put on the fridge and taken off when the present is taken care of. Having a place to put things so they don’t pile up on the counters is a plus.

This is something that I fight regularly. I’m pretty sure that my paper breeds at night when no one is looking, because I’ll manage to wean it down to a single sheet or maybe two, and then miraculously a week later it’s back to a stack. My biggest problem is simply that my office is down stairs, and far away from where I open up mail and sort through kid stuff. That isn’t going to change, either, so I have to figure out a better solution than just stacking stuff up intending to eventually get it down to where it needs to go.

Every baby setter needs to have that paper cause back about 25 years ago I was watching my best friends kids that I have known all of their lives. I took the kids to the mountains during hunting season to give my husband a message and the kids knocked down a dead tree and it had a yellow jacket nest in it and one boy got hit 6 to 8 times and before I could get him down the mountain I knew something was very wrong. I stopped at my house long enough to drop the other kids and get the one boy to the hospital. He was in shock and in bag sharp. The hospital wouldn’t release the boy to me and I had to call his uncle. That is why you need that information ready for the baby setters.

These are all wonderful ideas. I am going to try some of them.

Heidi,
Have you considered getting some kind of container – a pretty basket maybe to keep upstairs and anything that needs to go down to your office goes in the basket until the next trip downstairs?

Kids and their school, activities and all the paper surrounding the same used to drive me crazy. I found a black wire standing file holder to keep on my desk in the kitchen. Each child had files for their specific needs. Homework for little ones due at the end of the week, fliers, etc. from school went straight into that child’s file. There was no problem when it was time to turn things in or find that permission slip. After the system was up and going we added specific files for activity info for teams,dance, band etc. It was easy to deal with the paper immediately that came home. And it was a breeze to go through and recycle.

Nancy–
Great idea to tackle the never-ending school papers! My husband put clear acrylic file pockets on the back of the laundry room door for each kid and that’s where they put their papers. We tried to be consistent and have them clean it out once a week. Then we have one clear acrylic pocket on the side of the fridge and that’s where “Important school papers” go immediately. This is primarily for any papers we need to sign or things with important dates. This has worked well for us even now that we are down from 4 kids to just 1 who needs to put stuff in the pockets!

Thanks for all the good tips. Parents of young children need to have all of this information handy for anyone in their home.
I do childcare, dog/house sitting and sometimes elder care. It is so important to have the medical release form that Leigh Anne mentioned. I have insisted on it even for my own grandchildren (# 26 was born last month!)when their parents are traveling.
It’s also helpful to have a list posted on the fridge with your address (in an emergency I might not know it),
house and cell phones, Dr (and vet) numbers as well as neighbors and family members. Also, poison hot line.
The suggestion about directions for how to work your TV, cable system, answering machine, MW and other electronic equipment is a good one. Marti

Thank you so much for linking to the Executive Homemaker binder. It’s a labor of love and something that’s so easy to follow.

Paper piles, especially related to the kids school and sports programs, can get so overwhelming. These are amazing resources and I’m off to check them out.

Thanks!