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Are you putting your family at risk?
I know that for the most part people generally care about their families. Most people can take all sorts of insults that are directed to them personally, but you had better not talk about our loved ones. In knowing this I cannot figure out why we do...
Awesome Dad's Top Ten Ways To Be The Foundation of Your Family
Part of the responsibility of being a father is to establish a strong foundation for the family. Just like a building foundation, much of this work goes unseen and rarely gets acknowledged, yet the strength and integrity of the entire structure...
Family Meals - Better For Children, Easier For You
Another day, another dinner to prepare. Are you having a difficult time finding easy to prepare meals that can satisfy your growing family? You want to give your family the best, but time is in short supply and preparing a healthy meal has...
Former Homeless Family Offers Three Homes to Survivors of Katrina
CHICAGO - Toni Shelton knows the challenges of being homeless with children, and now that she has found success in her life she is opening her three homes to refugees from Hurricane Katrina.
"I've been in a homeless situation myself with my...
Four Tips To Help You Set And Enforce Family Boundaries
A healthy sense of self comes from clear personal and family
boundaries. Much like physical structures that define space,
boundaries are what define us from one another. Healthy
boundaries are integral to how we find privacy, personal respect...
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The Family Organizer
I'm forever looking for ways to get better organized. It's even more of a challenge when you have a family to keep track of. The schedules, shopping lists, and tomorrow's to-do's are always being lost or shuffled from one place to another.
I've put together a family organizer that helps me keep track of my family's activities from week to week. This organizer makes it easy to keep track of almost anything.
One day I was looking at the ready-made templates that came with my word processing program, and I noticed there were many home-related templates already made up for me to use for my organizer. There was a monthly calendar and a weekly menu planner and grocery shopping list. I made a calendar for every month of the year to write important dates to remember, and printed out enough weekly menu planners to last a month or two.
The weekly meal planner has columns for every day of the week with "Breakfast," "Lunch," and "Dinner" listed for each day. Every weekend you write in your meals for the week, and then make up a shopping list to take to the grocery store. The menu planner has a place at the bottom to write in your shopping list, or you could make up a separate list. Download a free menu planner template from http://www.creativehomemaking.com/download.shtml. Just print, and photocopy as needed for your organizer.
The best way to organize your calendars and menu planners is in a three-ring binder. You can buy dividers that already have the months of the year
printed on them. Just file your monthly calendars in the binder with your weekly menu planners in between.
This is just the start. You can create sections in your binder for whatever you want. For instance, file your children's school or sports schedules in your organizer. Just punch holes in the pages and file them in the appropriate month. You could also include a list of phone numbers and addresses, or a list of family birthdays and anniversaries.
You can buy folders for your binder that have pockets in them. Make one for greeting cards and one for coupons. How about one for your monthly bills? The possibilities are endless.
One of the great things about the family organizer is that it keeps so many things handy and in a central location. Now if someone wants to know what's for dinner or has something to add to the grocery shopping list they can refer to the organizer themselves. We keep ours in the kitchen next to the microwave, where it's easily accessible. If you're afraid of pages getting messed up, sheet protectors work great. You can design a cover, too, and slip it into the front of the binder.
Family organizers are fun to make, relatively inexpensive, and limited only by your imagination. Start getting your family's schedules in order today!
About the Author
Originally published at Suite 101. Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom of four. For complete resources for the Christian home, visit her web site at http://www.Christian-Parent.com.
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