The Kitchen Book - Section Seven

Everything in this section is either a page protector or a plastic pocket. It's pretty straight forward...The first page has a list of things that we might need - stuff like the cable code for the TV so that J can't buy random movies and some codes for other things around the house.

This is the last section...what's in your book?! What did I miss????

The Kitchen Book - Section Six

Oh those dreaded pieces of paper that litter my house, my desk, my purse, and my pockets. This section of the book has helped somewhat...


I have changed things slightly since I created the pages I'm working off right now - if you check out Section Three you'll see that I've also included the grocery budget below there...I'd put it wherever it works for you. I moved ours to where our menus are, but I might be moving it back...I haven't decided.

As we collect receipts, we put them in the page protector. The idea was that as I paid off the bills, I'd attach the receipts to them. Yeah right. I'm getting there though. Alex goes through and shreds the bills we don't need to keep (groceries, other consumables) about once a month. So far he's just left the ones we might need for a return or something in the sleeve.

This is one part of the system we need to get more on top of...but at least there are very few stray receipts now...for the most part they're safely stowed in these pockets!

Anyone have a good receipt solution they'd like to share???

All the rest of the pieces in this section are just labeled page protectors

The Kitchen Book - Section Five

This section keeps our bank happy. And our utility companies. And those kinds of people.



It's essentially the following information in page protector:




I do most of the bill paying, so we decided we needed a back up in case Alex had to look after it.

We used to have a spreadsheet that went on and on and on for days. I got the initial spreadsheet from Crazy Aunt Purl (the link is about 3/4 of the way down the page) and it grew. And it grew. And then it became a mountain. And our finances were more of a mole hill. And who cares how much I spent on each trip to the grocery store in May.

Blah.

So I revamped our budgeting system.

We don't have a spreadsheet to track anymore.

We bank at a credit union that offers no-fee chequing and savings accounts. We can have as many as we want. We have two chequing accounts - one for groceries, cheques (we write, oh, fifteen a year, maybe) and pre-authorized debits, like car insurance and the other is just for mortgage payments.

We have close to seventy-five hundred savings accounts. Well, maybe 12, but still. This is the very best way we have found to budget. It's still being tweaked, but for now, it works.

We both have our pay direct deposited into the main chequing account. Every pay day (we're on different schedules) I do the big money transfer so that everything is where it's supposed to be. Some of the transfers are automatic - the mortgage payments and car insurance for instance (bills like car insurance stay in the savings account until they're due so we get a tiny bit of interest). Our grocery money is transferred in every two weeks. We do top it up if we need to, but it's discretionary - we might top up if something we use a lot is on sale or if I buy diapers for J - we have a separate budget for those, but I don't get the clerk to do two transactions at the store...that's just silly.

We can only access the main chequing account and one savings account using our cards. That savings account holds our entertainment money - when it's gone, it's gone. The best part about this system is that we do only have access to the two accounts unless we're using the online systems. It means we really have to think about most of our purchases.

We also both get a small amount transferred to our personal accounts each month - that way we don't have to check in if we want to buy something for ourselves (or each other), grab a coffee on the way to work, have lunch with a friend, whatever.

This works really well for us and our bank likes it too - the last time we were in for something, the man who helped us said he wished all of their customers would set up similar systems - it's a big help, especially for people who have trouble saving.

What budget system do you use? We're always trying to improve ours, so I'd love to hear about yours!

The Kitchen Book - Section Four

I'm back from our little Thanksgiving break...I thought I'd have an internet connection so that I could keep blogging lots, but I didn't (well, I sort of did, some of the time). Turns out that after being away for a couple of days I didn't have the inclination to blog anyway!


I don't have anything fun for the daycare section. It's a bunch of page protectors with the daycare contract, the daycare hand book, receipts and anything else that's relevant to daycare in the back. There is also a page protector with the names and phone numbers of the daycare staff and the other children and their parents.

Pretty simple. Pretty straight forward. But it means that everyone knows exactly where to find that information when we need it!

Boring.

The Kitchen Book - Section Three

This is the section that keeps us running all week!

On Sunday I start figuring out what we're going to eat next week - this involves a combination of what we have in the fridge, what's on sale at the two big groceries store where we shop, and what has been requested. I do it by hand on this page - writing the groceries we need for each day in the box. This allows me to make sure I don't forget a key ingredient in some recipe and decide that, hey, we're having fish on Thursday, so I'll pick it up on Wednesday or Thursday on my way home, not on Sunday. Then it will be fresher.

I use the back to make the actual grocery list. I fold the page in three for three lists - one for each grocery store and one of stuff I can get either place. Yes, I do shop at two grocery stores.
We budget about $250 every two weeks for groceries and I keep a running tally sheet in this section - it's just three hole punched. Our budget is not a firm one. If we need more money in the grocery account before the week is up, we'll transfer some in. If we don't use it all, the extra gets transferred to our savings and we start the next two weeks at $250 again.

This is what the finished menu looks like - you can see I've scribbled on this one. Every evening as I make lunches, I do any prep for the next night's dinner that I can - chopping onions, putting together a casserole, anything to make the evening go smoothly. I have 2 -3 hours after J goes to bed before I have to go to bed myself, so I try to use that time well. Our mornings are pretty tight. I have it down to a science that has about 10-15 minutes of extra time...making lunch isn't an option and prepping dinner is only done when absolutely necessary - like loading the slow cooker or something.

The prep column is set up so that the box next to Monday is for Tuesday's meals (or Wednesday if need be). The idea is that anyone could pick up the menu and figure it out.

After the menu I try to put as many of the recipes, in order of use, as I can. I've been slowly typing them into the template below or scanning them (depending on where they came from). Then I have a copy of the ones from magazines or the internet than I can print if my other copy gets ruined. I keep them in page protectors because I take them out and use a magnet to hold them to the side of the fridge or the range hood while I cook. I still use my cookbooks, but these pages are nice because we can annotate the recipes.
This is the template...pretty boring, right?
So I included a sample recipe. This is just a random recipe I wrote down, but if it had come from a cookbook, I would have put which one and what page you can find it on for reference.

These pages I write any annotations on and I also include a grocery list for items that I wouldn't normally have in the cupboard or fridge. Pretty much everything in this recipe is always in our house, so I didn't make a special grocery list.
The last thing in this section is a list of what's in our freezer. Our freezer is outside in a storage closet and I don't want to go out there if I don't have to. This list also means I don't tend to buy things in multiples by accident (I do buy in multiples if the price is good though). It saves us a bit of money because instead of buying new chicken that's not on sale, I can use up some of the stuff I bought a lot of because it was such a good price. As we use stuff I cross it off and add the new things after I grocery shop.

The Kitchen Book - Section Two

Section Two looks small, but it's not...not really...and this is a big part of what needed some help in our lives.
Housework. Chores. Whatever you call it. I don't particularly enjoy doing it, but I like lists, so I'm happier to do it if I can cross it off a list.

At the front of this section is a list of all the jobs and when they need to be done. This is for easy reference. Because not all of the pages in this section live in the book.
As you can see, there's a note that says "charts inside cupboard." That's because we had tried it one way and that didn't work for us (but it might work for you so I've included it here) so we're trying it a different way that involved the cupboard.
We used to print a week's worth of these, three-hole punch them and put them in the binder. Then we'd check off our jobs as they got done. But we didn't always check them off. So sometimes things got done twice. Which isn't an issue except that it's a bit of a waste of time. The reason we wanted an easy to see visual is because Alex often works nights, so I can't just ask him if he already mopped the floor while we were at work and daycare. For example.

The nice thing about printing this every week was that we could modify it when Alex worked a different shift or if we were going away or one of us was going away or something.

But we're lazy/can't be bothered/too busy/always forgetting to open the book and tick things off.

So we've moved on to these two charts which are taped inside a kitchen cabinet and last for about a month. Extras (with new dates) are stored in a sheet protector after the list of chores.
This is the stuff we have to do everyday. Some of it should be obvious - like whether or not the beds get made, but some of it isn't always that clear. We have wooden floors and a toddler. The colour coding is just to give a visual break between morning, after work and after J goes to bed jobs. It doesn't mean that the dishes HAVE to be done before J goes to bed. Honestly, most nights it's easier to wait.
These are the weekly jobs (the ones that usually moved around with Alex's schedule, but whatever). In the old system if a job didn't get done, one of us just wrote it on the next day's sheet to remind us it to do it that day (if we remembered). There's no rewriting with this system, but it's pretty obviously when a job gets missed.

I think we're going to add a monthly list to - things like pulling out the stove and vacuuming behind it and washing down the sides or wiping the fronts of all the cabinets and flipping the mattress.

I got the idea for these charts from the charts that lived in the staff laundry room at Pax Lodge. We had weekly, monthly and quarterly jobs there and because there was a volunteer staff of seven with a change over of 1-3 people every month, they needed a system like this! Thanks Pax Lodge - you still influence my life on an almost daily basis!

The Kitchen Book - Section One

So, Section One is one of the most used parts of our book. We use it for our sitters and we use it ourselves - all the time.

There's all kinds of good stuff in this section and you could add or delete as needed for your family.
This list is super useful - In this age of phone with address books, we don't have to memorize phone numbers anymore. I know my parents' numbers, my grandma's numbers and my sisters' cell phone numbers, but that's about it. I have no idea what Alex's family's numbers are. When we have a sitter, we have to leave numbers. This is perfect. It's all there and clearly laid out. As we start to have a sitter (who is not related to J) a little more often, I think I might add a specific babysitter's phone list page that includes the numbers of a couple of neighbours and maybe, because it's in a page protector, a place where I can write where we will be with a dry erase marker. This is also not as important as it was when I was babysitting because I pretty much always have my phone with me, so even if the restaurant number isn't there, I can be reached (I still think it's a good idea for the sitter to know where I am though...no secrets)
Strata information is very important. Since I made our book we have gone from having a management company to being self managed, so this has changed a bit. This page could also be adapted to use if you rent and need your landlord's information handy instead. Or if you own a home, this could be where you list the trades you use regularly.
More important babysitter information - and emergency information for us because sometimes, our brains fail in an emergency. I said to Alex, if something happens and we need an ambulance or there's a fire, this is probably one of the things we should grab and take with us. It has all of our important information and contact numbers in it.

I store this in page protector which also holds immunization records and hospital cards (for quicker Emergency Room service).
I keep a year's worth of these pages and we write on them as we go. The blank box at the bottom can be useful for all kinds of stuff. I keep a page protector facing months that have "stuff" to go with things on calendar - e-tickets for ferry reservations or the plane, reservations confirmations for hotels, wedding or birthday invitations etc.
This is what we use to pre-plan. My plan is to sit down and enter everything into the 2011 version of the monthly calendar at the end of December and print it. Some things are finding permanent homes on the pre-plan list - things like birthdays and anniversaries and other things that happen every year on the same day.

The Kitchen Book - Setting It Up

Okay, so before I started on my kitchen book, I did a lot of thinking about what I wanted in it. I took a look at FlyLady's suggestions but I'm impatient, so I did it all at once (well, over the course of a week once I decided what I was doing).

Before you start, think about what will work best for you. We keep ours in the kitchen, so I wanted to make sure it wasn't going to get completely ruined by water or smell from the cooking smells. If yours is going to live somewhere else - a bookcase near your desk, a drawer in the living room or whatever - you might not be as worried about waterproofness.

We started out with a 1" binder, a package of tabbed dividers and some sheet protectors. About four months later our binder has become two - a 1" and a 1 1/2" - (I'll get to that in a later post), two kinds of tabbed dividers (numbered to 7 and alphabet), sheet protectors and plastic pockets.


I love the sheet protectors and the plastic pockets are awesome!

I made sure the main binder had pouches inside the front cover (it has them inside the back too, but I'm not as worried about that). The front cover has any (non-bill) correspondence we need to deal with, stamps and return address labels in it. We have a stationery drawer, so if we need paper or envelopes, that's where they are, not in the pouch because they'd take up too much space.

Once you've got your supplies, you're ready to go! I started my book as some scribbles on a piece of paper - information we needed to give to a sitter or stuff that Alex would call me at work to find out or I'd call him to find out. I decided it should be in one easy to use, easy to find place instead of on scraps of papers or stored in our brains somehow.

So, grab a piece of paper or email me for my template or make your own...it's time to make a kitchen/house/control book for you!

Smooth running

Ever heard of FlyLady? A Guiding friend told me about the 27 fling boogie a few years ago and I went and checked her out. And then forgot about her. And then checked her out again. And then forgot about her...you get the picture?

I couldn't make all of her things work for me.

I hate wearing shoes, especially in the house.

I can't make the bed when I get up, someone is still asleep in it.

I often can't get up 15 minutes before my family because my alarm clock is often a small child, yelling "Mommy! I wake up! Mommy! Come! I wake UP!" And there's no predicting that.

There were lots of can'ts. Then I read One Year To An Organized Life and I realized that hey, there were lots of good things in both books and I could make MY OWN SYSTEM.

Wow!

What a concept.

So I made my own "Control Journal" but at our house we didn't like that name for it. It made me feel like the journal was controlling us, not that we were using it to control what was going on in our lives.

We call our the kitchen book. Mostly because it lives in the kitchen and we're not all that creative.

I've had a few people ask about it and I've even made up a template because someone I know was so intrigued she wanted her own.

And it makes our life easier.

And since a few more people have asked about it, instead of reeling off the same story over and over and over, I figured I'd blog about it.

But it will take a few posts. Because it's a big thing. If you just want to skip all that, email me and I'll send you the template. Blogger won't let me upload an Excel document.

EDIT: This is the table of contents...I think I'll break the posts down into sections...

click the picture twice to see a nice, clear image (the first click will open a new window, the second click will zoom)