Hasta La Ideas

On Friday, I wrote about creating an information notebook for every person in your family. Notebooks are great because they keep all of your important papers in one place and they are easily portable. In our home, we have a recipe notebook, appliance notebook (instruction manuals, purchase receipts, maintenance and repair receipts, and warranty information), and important information notebooks for all four of us (our cat even has one).

We store these notebooks in a place where we can find them quickly, easily spot if someone hasn’t returned the notebook to its shelf after use, but in an area that has minimal guest traffic. Our personal notebooks are valuable to us and we would be devastated if we lost them, so most of the information in them has also been scanned and then the files backed up online.

The appliance notebook lives with our house — we got it from the previous owner, who got it from the previous owner, who got it from the couple who first owned our home — and we plan to pass it along to the next resident whenever we move. We know what company and what person at that company has worked on our house and its appliances since it was built, and the second owner of the house even commented on every repair and if he felt the repair person did a good job.

As we’ve mentioned before, all you need to do to build a notebook is get a three-ring binder, a pack of sheet protectors, and you’re ready to go. If you want a more elaborate notebook, you can use tab dividers to separate types of documents, and a zipper pocket at the front of the notebook to hold sticky notes, pens, pencils, maybe scissors and a highlighter, and paper clips. The hardest part of the project is remembering to take out information as it becomes irrelevant. Otherwise, notebooks are a breeze to use.

We don’t currently use a system like this for our car, but I would think it would be simple to create one and use it. It’s uncomfortable to think about, but an emergency notebook that each person in the family creates in case of death or serious injury could be very helpful. Also, a notebook for chores and instructions and images explaining how to do those chores could be beneficial for families with young children just starting to help out around the house.

Do you use notebooks to keep your home and family organized? Tell us about the notebooks you have created and how you use them in the comments.