The Happy Camper Family Organiser

Sparked by a recent need to be more organised, I started looking online for inspiration.  It seems that being the little lady of the house I am the only one who is remotely organised and without calendars, planners, a diary and various lists our household chores would be highly neglected as would any form of a decent weeknight dinner. 

We both work, the kiddo goes to school and has after school activities.  We are lucky as we only (currently) have one dependent to keep track of.  I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when the baby joins the kiddo in regular school attendance.  Two kids to keep track of. Eek! 

I have the utmost respect for mothers of a household of multiple children.  The cooking and cleaning alone is a killer (especially if you don’t have a dishwasher as we have experienced for the past year) let alone keeping track of all of their parties, school excursions and extra-curricular activities.  Hats off ladies. Hats off. 

So back to the organiser. I came across the idea on Pinterest and pinned it.  Some say that Pinterest is a waste of time as it’s all about time-wasting, day dreaming and pinning things that you’re never actually going to follow through on.  I disagree.  I regularly revisit my pins to see if I can spawn a little creativity (when I have no mojo) or to get ideas.  And I’m so glad I pinned this one. 

The idea is that your family organiser will contain all those pesky random floating about the house papers, letters, notices and other important things you need to store somewhere handy.  Mine have always just been left around the house in piles.  Until the mister goes on one of his cleaning sprees and creatively files them only to later negate any responsibility for knowing their whereabouts. Of course he will deny all of this if confronted. 

Honestly, it’s such a simple idea and if you’re anything like me you’ll have most of the supplies already sitting around your house and if not then a trip to your local stationery shop will get you sorted. 

What you’ll need

• folder/binder
• divider tabs
• pen
• plastic sleeves
• hole punch (one which lives inside your folder is preferable, that way it will never be misplaced)

And here are some heading suggestions for your section tabs to get you started:

Bills

• To be paid (in a plastic sleeve)
• Paid
• Clean this section out every 6-12 months otherwise you’ll end up filling your binder with bills. Ewh, that’s definitely no fun.

Important Contacts

• Include a few business card plastic A4 sleeves to easily store doctors, specialists, plumbers, electricians and other important contacts business cards
• Download from your mobile phone and print out a copy of your contacts.  This will come in handy if your phone gets wiped, stolen or lost. Trust me. I speak from experience.

Food planning

• your weekly meal planner
• local take-out menus
• clippings or print-outs of some recipes you’d like to try

School

• Report cards and progress reports
• Important notices
• Newsletters
• Permission slips
• Homework plans etc

Health/Medical

• Keep your medicine scripts and repeats handy
• Specialist appointment letters
• Private health insurance statements and membership details

Payslips

• The mister works in sales so he receives weekly payslips and weekly commission slips.  So much paper.  Keep them handy and in chronological order in case you need to use them for applying for loans or credit cards.

Cleaning

• If you have a seasonal cleaning planner (I’m not that organised), then this will be the place for it.
• Also, handy tips for cleaning your house minus the harmful chemicals. I also have some printouts on how to use bi carb soda and vinegar in and around the house in this section

Memberships, Logins, Passwords
We live mostly in a virtual world and it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of all your online passwords, usernames and other bibs and bobs.  Use this section for print-outs of your login info for various sites, memberships and rewards programs.  You’ll never again be asking yourself what the heck the password is!

• Frequent flyer and shopping rewards programs
• Toll pass / e-tag
• Email accounts
• Social media accounts
• Government websites such as Centrelink and Medicare

Warranties/Receipts/Instruction Manuals
There's nothing worse than having to replace something that cost a small fortune. Wait there is. When it's still under warranty and you can't find the proof of purchase. Crap! 

• Keep big ticket item receipts in here along with instruction manuals and warranties. You'll never be amiss again!

Miscellaneous

• And lastly, this is where all the other random things which don't have a home will be stored. Things that you need to keep handy, but don't necessarily require their own section.

Lastly, once you finished making your organiser, you might want to create a slip-cover for it so that it looks little more interesting and enticing than boring oldoffice stationery.  I just created one simply using the measurements of the folder.

Happy planning lovelies!