Household Notebook (redux)

Last night, in my effort to avoid sleeping because I didn't want to deal with nightmares again, I did some work on that household notebook thing. I've got the different sections I want in it divided up. I'm going to be adding more separators later when I have things a bit more organized and such. At the moment I've got the following sections:

• Planning
• Phone
• Family
• Home Management
• Meals & Menus

The Planning section currently has a month at a glance calendar in it for the year, a schedule for myself and one for each of the boys. I am finding the regimentation of a written schedule is not working very well for me but it is working fairly well for the boys. I'm most likely going to replace the written schedule for me with a list of routines until I have a more accurate estimate of how long items take. Then, I'll be including the schedule for myself again. I hope to get a week at a glance calendar for this section as well, this way I can get the week planned out a bit more detailed then a few notes per day.

The Phone section is going to be getting reorganized. I started out with a list of emergency contacts followed by a list of family contacts. I'm going to sit down and re-prioritize that list. Obviously, the list of emergency contacts is going to be there on the front page of this section. This, however, is then going to be followed by an alphabetized list of frequently called numbers, additionally divided by if they're businesses, friends, or family. Obviously, there are going to be some numbers listed that don't get as many calls as others. That, however, isn't going to make too big of a difference, because of how it is going to be organized. I plan on using tabs to divide this section up.

The Family section is going to be divided up for each person. On the first page for each of our sections is going to be our full name, allergy list, and medical condition list. This way, god forbid, there is an emergency all of the major information like blood type and my medication allergies is really easy to find. A list of doctor visits is then going to follow this with the date, reason for appointment set up, diagnosis, and treatment. A part of me says it is overkill to do this, but then I look back over the last year and I can't help but feel that it is going to be extremely helpful to have this 'condensed' version of our medical history on hand.

I'm also going to be putting in the Family section things like what people's favorite colors are, clothing sizes, and food preferences. It's going to be pretty mercurial for the boys, but somethings may remain consistent for a while, like Cuddle-Bear's preference for sweet potatoes or Beloved's distaste for the combination of onions and tomato in pasta sauce. I realize that this is again going to seem like over kill but if Beloved needed to take care of things because I got terribly ill again in the future, I know that this is going to help him out.

It may seem counter intuitive, but the list of household rules is going to go under Home Management. It is just something that helps with how the house runs, thus, in my mind, it falls under the category of household management. There is going to be a subsection for chores assigned for each child (obviously Snuggle-Bug isn't big enough for chores yet, but when he is...) and chores divided up by each room. I like the suggested list of ideas for other things to go in this section on that OrganizedHome.com page about household notebooks.

I'm thinking about following their suggestions also on the Meals & Menus section. I'm pretty sure it would make Beloved's life a LOT easier if he could just look at a page and see what he needed to get at the grocery store on the occasions he is the one who goes out shopping. I know that it will make meal planning a lot easier. I am going to add one thing, however, to their list of things to put in that section. I'm going to put together a collection of recipes for the meals that we frequently have. This is going to be another thing for Beloved in case he needs to be in charge of things because I'm ill.

Of course, because I am planning around this possibility, I will never again be so horribly ill. It'll just be how it happens because when ever you plan for something like that it doesn't happen and you feel foolish until you start being lazy. THEN everything goes to hell and your back-up plan fails because you got lazy. :P Not that I have ever had anything like that happen to me before...