Almost five years ago now, I put together our family organization binder. I was about 7 months pregnant with my second and knew life was about to get CRAZY. To be honest, it was already crazy with one kid. I still stand behind the fact that going from zero to one child was the HARDEST, for me at least. Life was flipped upside down, and I wasn’t prepared. I had taken all the classes on pregnancy and birth, read the books, but nobody really tells you how intense the immediate weeks are after a baby comes into the world. I’m sorry, did I say weeks? Correction – YEARS. The sleep deprivation, alone, is enough to send you running for the hills… or at least to a child-free corner to curl in a ball for whatever shuteye you can steal.
This second time around, I was determined to be prepared! I knew I was going to have a C-section this time, so I needed to plan for the extra days I’d be in the hospital. Our parents were swapping David-duty, and I knew communication lines could get crossed. I immediately thought of the episode in Friends where Monica pulls out her wedding binder after Chandler proposes. A book filled with everything you would need to know about wedding planning, organized perfectly, no matter which way you looked at it or what you needed to know. (You can also compare it to the adoption book they are “gifted”… Either comparison works!) I wanted to create a book like that, one that would basically replace my mom brain. All meals, grocery lists, schedules, safety precautions, etc, in one place. Anyone could step in at any moment and know where things left off.
In reality, no such book exists… Basically, I’m irreplaceable (duh)… But this binder turned out to be insanely helpful, and we’ve used it a ton over the past few years. Especially when I went back to work part-time, and we had to juggle the confusion of part-time sitter/nanny care.
Meal Planning Section
In my opinion, the most important and most beneficial element to this binder is the meal planning. I came across this website, and she includes free printables that I knew I needed. There are blank calendar pages for the meal planning and blank category pages from which to pull from. She even has the link to self-laminating pouches (what I used), in case you don’t have access to a laminating machine. The laminating part is important because it makes these printables totally reusable. All materials you would need are linked in her post!
Once laminated, you can use dry erase markers or sticky notes to plan out your meals. Or a combination of both! You can plan weekly, or even monthly. Before Johnny was born, I filled out enough little sticky notes to allow for three weeks of meals to be planned out! I did a bunch of freezer meals and grocery shopping to minimize any work in the first few weeks after baby. It took out any thinking that needed to be done in the newborn haze. I took full advantage of the nesting phenomena and did all the work then.
Even without pregnancy, these menu sheets are awesome. They help eliminate any unnecessary spending at the grocery store because I’m not just buying for general meal ideas. It’s very specific. I also tried to color-code the menu items, so it helps me to offer a variety of foods each week.
Recipe Folder
The other important component is the folder to hold the recipes needed to execute the meals planned for the week. I have a big recipe book that I absolutely LOVE, but it’s big and bulky and takes time to pull out for use. That makes me sound incredibly lazy, but with kids, every second counts. I jot down some of my most-used recipes and keep them in this folder inside the binder. I try to have most of the recipes in the folder that coincide with the meal ideas on the little post-it notes.
The “Other” Tabs
The menu planning and recipe folder are really the most used part of this binder, but I also ended up including the following…
- Grocery list with all our usual items – This was helpful to skim over to decide what was needed and avoid forgetting anything.
- Kid Schedules – Excel Version
- Kid Schedules – Word/more detailed
- House Info – If anyone staying at the house to watch our kids
- Packing Lists – For school or sitter, etc.
The tabs and info would obviously be different for each person, but it’s been a huge help for us to have all this information in one place. Now we just need to plan a vacation to put this stuff to good use:)