20 Minute Organizing || The Home Binder

Nothing is safe around here as I purge and organize this January! The first organization project to get tackled in 2022 is making an official “FAMILY HOME BINDER”. What is a home binder? Well, basically it is a topline collection of all of the important things it takes to run this household. No more hunting down contacts or trying to remember how many bales of pine straw we had delivered last spring or who repaired our fireplace four winters ago. 

All of that information now has an official home… in the HOME BINDER. 

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To be honest, I have been putting this Home Binder together for the past 12 months- so this might take you longer than 20 minutes! But making it pretty and “official” took me about 20 minutes. If you haven’t started to put something like this together- you can do it in the opposite order that I did.  Today- start by printing all of the pretty labels and find a binder. Then over the next few months as paperwork and bills comes in or you track down a home vendor or contact- it will have a home to live in moving forward.

I pay most of our bills online and I communicate with most home repair vendors via text. Technology is a wonderful thing! But the only problem is that without paper receipts or a place to file bills away – it can be tricky to know your account number or contacts when there is an issue. I do love having paperless billing and auto-pay, but I still like having customer service numbers and account numbers where I can easily access them in case of emergency.  And have you ever found yourself hunting in your phone contacts for a vendor you used at some point?

Here are the categories I use for our Home Binder:

Personal Contacts
Home Maintenance Contacts & Utilities
Home || Repairs & Receipts   (things like AC repairs, garage door opener replacement, etc)
Home || Furniture, Paint Colors
Insurance || Life, Home, Car
Health || Insurance, Doctors, Medical Records
Purchases ||  Warranties/Receipts    (things like TV’s or big purchases)
Pet Records
Property Taxes
Important Documents

Obviously, your binder may need to look a little different based on your needs. But these are the main buckets I have found helpful for running our household.  So in my printable that I am offering below, I also included a few blank divider pages so things can be written in as needed. I already had the binder, dividers and clear sheet protectors, so this project cost NOTHING for me! The best kind of organizing, right? 

For the personal contacts, I just print out the list that I used from the most recent Christmas card list. It’s so nice to have it printed out in a hard copy so I can refer to it throughout the year as needed. I can also jot down any updates as I get them so that next year my address list is Christmas card ready. 

Important documents are things like our marriage license and copies of our passports and any other document that you may need to refer to. 

In addition to tabs, I made some divider pages. If you were around last January- these might look familiar because they are the same that I used for our Recipe Binder project from last year! If you missed that post- you can read it HERE- 20 Minute Organizing || Recipes and Cookbooks

 

I hope you feel inspired to start a Home Binder for yourself. I refer to this thing multiple times a month and I always give myself a virtual high five when my husband calls and wants to know something random like who we used for our garage door repair 2 years ago. 🙂  

 

HOME BINDER FREE DOWNLOADS

If you would like to print your own binder pages- I am offering mine as a free printable download. 

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It always feels good to tackle a spot in the house, and I know I will be thanking myself all year for getting this one knocked out. 
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Happy Organizing! xoxo-

Heather

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