by Paul Worthington

Most home management notebooks start with the minutae and work up, I do the reverse.  Here’s a quick list for building the book from yearly to daily.  Of course, once you look at it, you might not think it’s so quick, but we’re organizing your WHOLE LIFE here, right?:

Builder Section (Yearly Plans):

  1. Do you home school?  If yes, list out your year in weeks, including vacations etc.
  2. Do you garden? If yes, print out one of our Garden Plans.  If you start seeds indoors, use these:  Spring, Fall.
  3. Who performs/schedules home maintenance and seasonal chores?  If it’s you, print out Flylady’s journal or my stripped down Seasonal Chore Checklists.
  4. Do you regularly travel?  If yes, make a list of your typical annual trips.
  5. Does your family exchange birthday gifts and Mother’s Day gifts?  If yes, and you’re at least partly in charge of it, print out a yearly Non Xmas Gift Plan and fill it out.
  6. And who performs/schedules car maintenance?  If it’s you, write that down next to each trip.
  7. Do you have personal or work long term projects?  If yes, print out a few of these and fill them out with loose dates.
  8. Do you do the cleaning or at least schedule it?  Print out my Zone Chores or fly lady’s and adapt to your home.  You need five zones for your rotation to match hers.
  9. Does your year have 52 weeks? (HA!)  Print out my download my Basic Yearly Plan and Tentative Detailed Yearly Plan 2011 (TDYP).  Edit the mess out of them, putting in your own information from #1-#8.

This Season (weekly plans):

Once you have built your TDYP, this is the section you will repeat every few months.

  1. Check out my Basic Weekly Plan and these.  Pick which style you like (I scribble in margins of mine the other is more traditional).  Edit mine or get her’s and print out a season’s worth.
  2. Put in all of the information from your TDYP for this season.
  3. Do you do your own cleaning or do you outsource it?  File your zone chores behind the proper week.  You can print out enough for the season or just move the same sheets from week to week.  I do that.  I scribble on them to keep track of what I’ve actually done each month until they fall apart.  Then I print new ones.
  4. Do you homeschool?  Print out weekly Assignment Logs. Date and put them behind the correct weeks.
  5. Do you garden?  Print out weekly Garden Logs. Date and put them behind the correct weeks.
  6. Are you traveling this season?  Print out Flylady’s Packing Journal or my stripped down PackingCJ. File behind the correct week.
  7. Is Christmas this season?  Print out Flylady’s Holiday Control Journal or my stripped down XmasCJ. File it behind the week you plan to start work on it.
  8. Put the TDYP for this season in your purse for scheduling appts and whatnot.
  9. ONCE a week, I usually do Sunday night, make sure there’s nothing new on the TDYP to enter into this week’s schedule.

Weekly/Daily Routines:

  1. If you didn’t already edit my Basic Weekly Plan from step one in the last section, do it now.  You probably need to schedule a Home Blessing Day, Zone Chore Days, and Paperwork/Planning Day in your week.  Put it in your routine section, of on the wall.  Here’s flylady’s.
  2. If you don’t already have a set Basic Daily Plan, Morning Chore and Evening Chore routines, edit mine and put it in your routine section.  Here’s flylady’s.
  3. If you don’t already have a set Financial Blessing and Home Blessing routine, edit mine and put them in your routine section or on your wall.  Here’s flylady’s weekly chore checklist and her FACE CJ where I got the financial blessing hour from.

Hope this helps!

Ivory