MY NEW ORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEM

I'm soooooooo excited about my new index card system! Thanks to my Aunt Suzee for giving me the book and showing me how to do this! I love it! The book is called, Sidetracked Home Executives, by two sisters, Pam Young and Peggy Jones. It teaches you how to set up an index card file to organize your daily chores, weekly chores, monthly, etc. It's designed for people who are slobs and are hopelessly un-organized. I'm one of those people who was born organized, and a lot of what the book suggested I was already doing. However, I have trouble keeping track of everything I have to do sometimes because I have lots to remember as the Nursery Coordinator at church, the editor of Circle of Friends, and of course day-to-day chores in running a home.

Here's how it works: Daily chores are on yellow. My yellow cards have things like Devotions with the kids, Memory Verse review, vacuum living room, dishes, straighten bathroom, etc. Some chores I do every other day and some only twice a week. These are on a different color of card. In the right hand corner of each card I mark how often I need to do this chore so when I've finished it for the day, I know when to file it: one day ahead, one week ahead, or in next month. Some chores need only be done 4 times a year or even once a year. I even keep my grocery list on an index card and add to it as I think of items and stick the coupons with it. I keep a card in the front of the box with important phone numbers on it, a card with computer passwords on it to save me time when I'm paying bills online or ordering stuff online, a card with my weekly menu plan and a card with my tenative weekly schedule. This book recommends you take one day off a week, which I love since I haven't had a day off since Ali was born! Even though my "day off" still involves feeding, dressing, bathing, entertaining, nursing, cooking, and some light cleaning, I try to use the afternoon to do something fun now and make a simple supper and save the heavy cleaning for the next day.

You can go so far as to put addresses and phone numbers of everyone you know in your index file, but I'm content to keep those in my address book. All I have is the index card dividers for Jan-Dec and then 1-31. It's been so cool to file things for months in advance and know that they won't get lost or forgotten under this system. For instance: I thought of a couple cool items to buy people this year for Christmas. I just made a card entitled Gift Ideas, jotted them down and stuck it behind the Nov. divider to remind me when I'm Christmas shopping. For May, my friend and I plan to have a yard sale, so I jotted down some items I don't want to forget to put in the sale and stuck it on a card behind the May divider. The authors of this book recommend that you put a card in each month's file with all the birthdays and anniversaries of people you know so that at the beginning of the month you can glance at it and buy or make the cards and get them out on time. Obviously I don't have a card in my daily file for EVERY single thing I do, like changing diapers, showering, getting dressed, etc. But it is SUPER helpful to have reminder cards for the things I tend to forget or overlook in the daily busy-ness of life. My cards remind me that this bill is due today, or that this person is having a baby shower next week and I should make a gift, or that I should call this friend and see how they are doing, etc. Because of this new system, I am reminded every other week to change the sheets on the bed, wash all the curtains in the house twice a year, clean the windows twice a month, etc. More deep cleaning gets done when I have a plan set for the day. Also, the authors recommend trying to get almost everything done before you leave the house. So, I usually spend two hours in the morning narrowing down my stack of cards for the day and try to get most of the things done before we go to visit Grandpa in the nursing home or go to the library or swimming. Then I have a little time to relax when the kids take their afternoon nap and I'm less stressed trying to do it all at the end of the day.

The authors of this book suggest you sit down and think of every room in your house and your car, garage, church activities, personal activities, etc. and make a card for each job/task associated with each room/activity. Then you can balance out the cards throughout the year so that the tasks/chores get done as needed. On Heavy Cleaning days you can spend 4 or more hours cleaning, but on light days you can do tasks that take less time. They think it's a good idea to also try to squeeze quick chores in between other things too. For instance, if you have 10 minutes before leaving for an appointment, they suggest that you squeeze in a 10 minute or less chore like quickly vacuuming the living room. It's good to label your storage boxes too and keep an inventory in your index system of what you have in storage and where so you can save time when you need to find something.

If you have more ?s about how you can set up an index card file, I'd be happy to share more on this subject!