We use it almost everyday.  We know where to find it.  We love how it keeps us organized.  What am I talking about?!  Our Household Binder of course 🙂

It’s became a valuable resource that we depend on.  Like anything in life, it changes and grows with our family needs.  What’s in our binder now wasn’t in there six years ago when we didn’t have any kids yet.

While everyone has different needs and desires depending on what stage of life they are in, I’d thought I’d share where we are at with our Household Binder right now.  Here are the categories we have in there now and why:

Goals

We keep our family goals in the front so we can see them often and review them throughout the year.  I’m not sure about you but for us not seeing or reviewing the goals easily falls on the back burner.  It’s great to write them down but it’s not going to do you any good if you don’t frequently look at them or review them.

Account Information

Our login information and passwords sit here.  We reference this page more than I’d like to, I always thought I’d remember the password but my age is catching up with me or it’s the mom brain.  I’m going to with with the mom brain 😉  I’m not a fan of doing the password reset, I will try a password three times before I’ll finally decide to get the binder to see what the password really is.  Anyone else agree that the password reset is kinda of nuisance? The printable we use hasn’t changed it’s layout for years.  I don’t even have that style saved anymore but it works for us and I’m a huge believer that if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

Mailing Labels

We keep a printed page of return labels here.  We keep them in our household binder because it’s a full page (8.5 x 11).  We also keep extra blank pages here so when we need to print more, they are handy and ready to go.  We used to keep them in another binder with other labels but when we needed more it was tough to figure out which ones we’d been using.  We have a lot of different labels and if you’ve gotten the Avery branded labels, you know there’s quite a few different types.  It’s much easier to grab the blank page now that’s it’s in the binder.  Then all we have to do is pull up the saved document, put the page in the printer and print!

Preschool Information

Our oldest started preschool this year and this is where we keep all the information information.  We have the tuition schedule and school calendar here. We also have the Preschool Handbook in there.

Daycare Information

Our youngest is in daycare.  We keep all the invoices that we receive here.  It’s easier for us to keep them all here and then at the end of the year we put them in the tax folder.  We used to file them in the tax folder right away but for whatever reason some got lost in the shuffle.  We also keep the Daycare Policy Handbook in there.

Pets

This is where we keep all of our pet information.  We do have a printable to keep track of all the vet visits but honestly we haven’t been updating it lately because there haven’t been too many vet visits.  We typically keep the last visit of paperwork in there and reference it to see when the last visit was.  We also keep all of the vaccination information in this file folder.

Misc.

This folder is full of random stuff.  For example, we have a local ranch by us and we keep their pamphelt in there because it has information about visiting the ranch, their website doesn’t have as much information, which is why we’ve kept theirs.  Also in there is information on the GoPouch, I received this as a Christmas gift and it’s the use and care guide on how to wash it.

All of our categories have labels on the folder tabs to easily identify them.  We also use pocket folders because it’s easier to put the pages in there quickly.  We used to use tab dividers and three hole punch everything but it became more work.  We’ve been able to save time because we just grab the binder, select the desired tab, and put in the document where it needs to go.  It’s also been faster to access the information because we can take out what we need quickly rather than actually opening up the binder claps to take out what we need.

One category that used to be in there that is very common is Finances.  We used to keep our monthly budget and bills in there but changed it out because we started using an app for our Monthly Budget (Every Dollar, it’s free!)  We also moved our bills to a pocket folder on the inside kitchen cabinet so they were easy to access.  This way we didn’t have to take out the binder every time we needed to pay a bill.

Using this Household Binder has kept us very organized.  Like I said before it changes and grows as we do.

Do you need to start yours today?  Here’s a cute binder and divider tabs to get you started 🙂

*affiliate links used

Do you have a Household Binder?  What categories do you use and why?