Homemaking Monday - Master Binder

Hello everyone and happy 1st day of June to you all. Our morning started off beautifully sunny but has slowly deteriorated to cooler and overcast weather. But I have some potatoes baking in the oven for lunch which are beginning to smell lovely and when there are lovely aromas coming from the kitchen it helps to cheer up a rather dreary day.

A week or so ago I promised a walk through my home keeping journal. I wasn't quite ready to show you before because my homemaking system needed a bit of a clean out and make over, an annual occurrence which happens around this time of year.

I have a four-fold system that helps me keep everything organised:

* My Master Binder
* Home keeping Journal and Daily Diary
* My File Crate System
*Home school Planner

Now each component has quite a bit to it so I thought that I would look at each one in a series of posts each Monday and link up with Strangers and Pilgrims 'The Art of Homemaking Monday's'

Today we have a look at my Master Binder which has had a cover make-over using some pretty scrap booking paper:

This binder I used to use as my home keeping or home management binder. But it is huge and I was finding that it was too cumbersome to use everyday, also there were sections in it that I didn't need to use every day and were more of a central storage system for important things that do not pertain to a specific year or month but things that I would need to be able to access at any time.

I have a separate annual accounts binder into which all bills are filed by category once they are paid. This holds something different. Lets take a look.

The categories I have in this binder are:

*Pets
*Pension
*Service Suppliers
*Seasonal Planning Lists
* Appliance manuals
* Medical
* Personal Documents
* Holiday and Outings
* Homeschooling

Let's look at what's behind each section:

In the 'Pets' section I have the vaccination certificates for each of my cats, a price list of services that my vet offers and a pamphlet of the local cattery that I use.

The 'Pension' Divider is self-explanatory. All details, statements etc regarding our pension plan is behind this divider. 

Next is 'Service Suppliers'. Now here I have pamphlets from our car insurance, our telephone and Internet supplier, any mobile phone contracts etc.

Next is 'Seasonal Planning and Lists'. In this section I have printed out a few planning posts from Dawn of By Sun and Candlelight. I enjoy reading through her process every so often, although I pretty much have my own way of planning out our seasonal celebrations, it's always nice to be inspired. Behind these printouts I have 12 dividers, one for each month of the year. I have past plans that I have posted about here (see the Seasonal Plans tab at the top) and these I use as a base. Each year dates of certain celebrations, feasts, etc change and my plans are adjusted, tweaked, added to or taken away from to suit that specific time and place.

Next section - Appliance Manuals.

Before I added this section my manuals for various appliances sat in a kitchen drawer - not even a delegated drawer, just where ever I happened to put it after unboxing. This is NOT a great system. Last year my washing machine needed attending to - it was still under warranty but of course you need the warranty to get it fixed. For two days I hunted high and low for it - I eventually found it and had my machine repaired, but what a stress! Lesson learnt - now all my manuals are stowed away in the Master Binder.

The Family Medical Section holds my daughters immunisation records from birth, any doctors reports that I might need to pass on to a new doctor regarding medical conditions etc. This has proved to be a useful part of my Master Binder on numerous occasions. I'm glad I have all the vital info I need easily accessible.

The Personal Documents holds things like our ownership papers for our cars, Cheque books (we don't really use them much), MOT reports, Counterpart Driving Licences which are null-and-void now anyway :), and our Lease agreement and Deposit details.

The Holiday's and Outings section holds any research I've done for holiday's and details of holidays booked (like arrival times, what they provide what you need to proved, directions, that sort of thing), pamphlets and flyer's or I've picked up along the way and computer print outs of places I would like to visit.

The last section is Home Schooling.

Behind this section I keep reports from our LEA (education inspector) visitor, details of various projects that are required by our curriculum provider, Contact details of our curriculum provider, a record of curriculum ordered, copies of learning plans I draw up each year for our LEA visitor and a copy of each years progress card for each child (their test results).

I have various certificates that the girls have been awarded stored in plastic sleeves in this section too.

My Master Binder is stored at the back of my File Crate, easily accessible but neatly out of the way too. 

So there we have it. I run through of my Master Binder, my quick go-to place for all the most important documents that we need to have an organised home.