Hey! I’m so glad you’re here today because I have the simplest of household organization hacks that might cause you to smack your forehead and say “duh!” Unless of course you’re ahead of me and already do this- in which case *round of applause*! For everyone else, read on! This will take one minute of your time, but it will save you lots of time in the future.
This is something I started doing for my blog, when my daily task list started growing. I found myself spending more and more time online just clicking around to get to the sites or information that I needed. Then it hit me- I need all of those links in one spot! Thus was born the “Daily” bookmark folder!
I created a folder on my bookmark bar, called it “Daily,” and added in links to every place I visited each day. It’s like a living “to do” list!
More recently, I smacked my own forehead and said, “Why am I not doing this for household things too?!”
So thus was born the “Household” bookmark folder!
If you find yourself clicking through several webpages, folders, etc, to get to the same places or information you need every single day, well now is the time to shorten your journey.
Related: Make over your medicine cabinet
Let me tell you what’s in my Household folder. I will say first, that these are almost all Google Docs (Google Drive is my hero).
- Budget Planning- My husband and I decided we needed to expand our current budget to include purchases we make less often but are anticipated, such as school photos and car registration fees. So I started a document to record all of our major purchases for a year.
- Year-at-a-Glance- This is our overall plan for tasks, projects, vacations, and everything else we do on a yearly basis. It’s a great snapshot look at the whole year and helps in planning for future months/years. (More about this awesome document in a bit!)
- Meal Plan- For the longest time I’ve wanted to have an easy-to-use list of our favorite meals, ingredients, and cooking instructions. I finally did it, and now when it’s time to plan meals for the week and buy groceries, all of the necessary info is just a click away.
- House Projects- An ongoing list of things that need to get done around the house (which is shared with my husband, thanks Google Drive!)
- Google Calendar- Okay can you tell I’m a Google fan yet? I bleed primary colors. Anyway, Google Calendar is an awesome way to keep track of all of your events, reminders, and to share calendars with others. I have access to my husband and my work’s calendar that I can easily toggle on and off to see what’s happening when. I use the reminders feature for repeating tasks, so they always pop up when I need to remember something!
Other good ideas to include would be: Daily Schedule, To Do list, and Budget. I have these as well, but they get used so much that they’ve earned one of the coveted spots on the bookmark bar itself, not in a folder.
So make your Household bookmark folder, put in links to the resources you use regularly, and boom, you just spent one minute saving yourself a lot of time in the future!
Now, while making the folder doesn’t take much time, putting together those documents, calendars, and spreadsheets that help keep your household in order might actually take a bit of time, if you don’t have those yet.
I will go ahead and take full credit for the bookmark folder idea, but I owe the “finally getting my household in order” to an incredible online course that I took at the beginning of the year. Let me tell you a little more about it, because it has changed my life for the better in so many ways!
Time Mastery for Women is the course I’m talking about, and it is currently open for the second round of participants! If you are a busy mom who is struggling to get more organized and find time for yourself and your passions, without feeling guilty, then you owe it to yourself to sign up for Time Mastery for Women.
Along with SO MANY other benefits (I’ll go into more detail in another post), the course provides you with several templates that will help you organize your life and household. I mentioned the “Year-at-a-Glance” document above that is in my Household folder- that is included in the course, as well as “Week-at-a-Glance” which is now the tool I use when planning out my week.
More than anything else, Time Mastery for Women gave me the guided opportunity to define exactly what I want out of life, and it helped me get organized and get inspired so I can move confidently in the direction of my goals. I highly recommend it!
I loved the course so much that I became an affiliate, so I do get a commission if you sign up through me, at no extra cost to you! I hope to see you there!
Thanks for stopping by today!