4 Sections You Must Have in Your Home Management Binder

Owning – and running – a home is no easy task, especially when you have a family. Putting together a home management binder is just one way in which you can reduce the hassles and stresses associated with keeping your home running efficiently, and to make your life easier in general.

What is a home management binder?

Simply put, a home management binder is a place where you can cumulate important pieces of information that’s relevant to the running of your home and life. This can include – but is not exclusive to – insurance documents, honey-do lists, contact information, and calendars to keep track of events. For many couples, it is usually just information that gathers dust and is only used in emergencies, however, if used frequently and can help you save time and maintain order on a daily basis.

Here are four home management binder categories that are an absolute must to have in your home management binder, plus the documents that should go in each of these sections:

• Home Maintenance and Improvement
• Important Documents
• Family Well-Being
• Lists and resources

You can learn how to use each section by reading the rest of this post. You can aslo click on the image below to download our printable Home Management Binder Section Templates

Home Maintenance and Improvement

The home maintenance section of your binder includes everything relating to the maintenance and improvement of your home, including records of the things that need fixing, cleaning, renovating, and any other improvements you need to make.

Here are a few of the documents you might want to keep in this section:

A honey-do list.

This is a list of odd-jobs and home improvements that aren’t necessarily urgent – for example, if the boiler breaks in winter, it’s not an item for the honey-do list, since it’s a job requiring more immediate action.

On the other hand, re-painting the front porch – if the paint has started to chip away, leaving the porch looking a little worse for wear – or clearing out the garden shed, for example, are tasks that don’t need to be done urgently, but they could do with being completed at some point in order to make your home look the best it can be.

Think of your honey-do list as a collection of the type of tasks you aim to do on a spare weekend – or on a rainy day – rather than the chores you know you need to do each week or month.

A home maintenance calendar.

On the other hand, a home maintenance calendar is exactly the place to put your weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and annual chores, to keep track of what needs doing and when, to help you stay on top of your household tasks.

Luckily, there are a number of excellent templates online for you to use to build your home maintenance calendar. In fact, there were so many we found it confusing so we complied everything we could find and made our own to save you some time. You can get the printable home maintenance calendar or the Google Calendar version on our Home Maintenance Calendar guide page.

Important documents

While the title of this section is broad, it allows each family to tailor it to their particular needs and organizational habits. Any document relating to property, transport or personal details – or anything you, or someone else, might need to find in an emergency – can be kept in this section so that you can find them when you need them.

Here are just a few of the documents that would be handy to have in this section of your home management binder:

• personal documents e.g. birth certificates, marriage license, social security cards, passport copies, important medical documents

• insurance documents e.g. home insurance, life insurance, car insurance

• in-case-of-emergency contact details, including details for each member of the household, and emergency numbers

• a list of passwords for your computer, phone, and safe

Family Well-being

This section includes everything that contributes the effective running of your family life throughout the year, whether it’s daily, weekly or annually.

Here are a few of the things that would be handy to have in this section of your home management binder:

Family budget.

Budgeting alone is an arduous enough task, but budgeting for a whole family can be positively gruelling.

To keep on top of everything – and to ensure that you and your partner are on the same page about your finances – there is no better tool than a physical family budget.

Family events calendar.

If you’re part of a large family, it’s difficult to keep on top of whose birthday is when – and there’s no greater blunder than forgetting to send your in-laws, or a much beloved aunt, or even your siblings, a birthday card.

More than relatives’ birthdays, however, it’s just as important to keep track of holidays, dentist appointments, and special children’s events – such as sports games, or music recitals. Having a family events calendar means that you won’t miss a single thing.

We recommend only putting big events that general repeat each year, or events that you want to make sure you don’t forget. You will find that this section will generally not replace an online calendar or daily planner, but can be used to as a way to reconcile your calendar as well as be able to fill a new daily planner if yours gets lost. We highly recommend utilizing family management apps in conjunction with your home management binder.

Individual/family goals.

A great way for each member of the family – and the family as a whole – to achieve what they want to achieve, is to be reminded of the goals they set, so they stay at the forefront of the family consciousness, which will help to inform the family’s actions each day.

More than this, having a physical record of the family’s goals – and the target for when they should be achieved – will allow you to keep track of progress.

Practices for family councils.

If your family is the type to have weekly, or bi-weekly, meetings to discuss any problems you might have – or events that are coming up – it’s useful to have a document on hand detailing the rules of these meetings, as well as the time and date they take place on.

That way, there’s no confusion. You could also extend this section to include ‘things discussed’, to keep track of the discussions and problems that your family has tackled each week, and which may need to be discussed again at the next meeting.

Lists and Resources

Lists are one of the most powerful organizational tools out there and can help to organize every section of your home life. This home management binder section can also be used as a catch-all for anything that you feel you need but doesn’t fit in the other home management categories.

Here are just a few of the lists that would be handy to have in this section of your home management binder:

Shopping lists.

Though not every family buys the same things each week, if you tend to stick to the same meals for the sake of ease and convenience, it’s useful to have a list that you can pull out each week to make sure you get everything you need.

More than this, if one member of the family usually does the shopping and – for some reason – is unable to carry out the task one week, then the person who the responsibility falls on can simply pull out the list to ensure they get everything necessary for the week.

A list of service contacts.

How much time do we all spend each year trying to find the contact details of the plumber, or the electrician, or even the babysitter? This is time that can easily be saved, by organizing all the contacts into a list.

Here are just a few of the service contact numbers (and other contact info, if necessary) that would be useful to have on your service contact list:

• the vet

• the electrician

• the plumber

• childcare  

• your children’s school

• builders/contractors

• cleaners/gardeners

These are just a few of the contacts that will be useful to have in one place, but each family is different, so make sure to think about the service professionals that you often use – or who you would benefit from being able to contact quickly.

A list of personal contacts.

If your phone breaks, and you can’t remember your parents’ numbers, or your best friend’s, or your in-laws’ – and they aren’t easily contactable on social media – then it’s incredibly useful to have a list of your most important personal contacts so that you can contact them whenever you want.

More than this, a list of personal contacts – including yours and your partner’s numbers (and your children’s, if they have phones) – allows your babysitter to contact you if there’s an emergency. Or, if something happens to you or your spouse while you’re at home, it allows your child to be able to call their grandparents. These are just a few of the instances in which having a physical list of these numbers is handy.

Packing lists.

To save your family scathes of time, consider putting a ‘standard packing list’ into your home management file.

Year on year, most vacations require the same items, and having a packing list will help to reduce the time and stress that comes with making sure your family has everything it needs.

Favourite recipes.

When you have kids, it can be tricky to make meals that everyone around the table likes, or isn’t allergic to.

When you find those coveted recipes – the recipes that everyone loves, and thanks the cook for – it’s truly a eureka! moment. Having a collection of these recipes to hand means that you can make them at a drop of a hat – or even take them on holiday with you, if you prefer to cook, rather than eat out, on your vacation.

Instructions for the babysitter.

Rather than going through your kids’ schedules – and the house rules – every time you hire a babysitter, you can make the process easier by simply typing out the rules and instructions that they need to follow, making your date night – or a night out with your friends – hassle-free.

Conclusion

So, if you want to upgrade the way you organize the goings-on in your home, be sure to put together a home management binder, to make running your home and life a little more manageable. If you felt like there is something your family needs that we didn’t mention then add it. That said we feel that grouping your binder by the above home management categories will simplify and organize your home management binder.