Household Systems ~ The Kiddo Binder

It’s time for a bit more binder organizing :)

You can read more about getting our Household systems and planning in place for the year here, our Finance Binder here, and how I’m Meal Planning here.

Today I’m talking about our Kiddo Binder. Yeah, super original name, I know. But that is what it is. There is so much info that you need fairly handy if you have kids: Vaccination records, emergency contact info sheets for school or day care, the important info from the pediatrician, and the stat records from well checks from month to month, year to year and important documents. Updating our Family/Household Binder is on my list from my Household Systems post, and that’s up next, but our Kiddo Binder goes hand in hand with that and I thought I’d share how I organize our kids’ info.

Here is what I’ve got in our Kiddo Binder:

• Day Care Emergency and Identification Info: We don’t need this section at the moment, but I like having a copy of all those forms that I have already filled out.
• Developmental Info: Those handouts that tell you at what month you should expect developmental milestones to be reached.
• Stats for Each Kiddo: Their height, weight, notes from each doctor’s visit that they give you as you leave the doctor’s office. Our doctor’s office is online and I have signed us all up. And have checked in on it a big, fat ZERO times. I don’t really remember my password for it, so it just seems like more work!!! Guess I should go in and check it out. But I like to have their height, weight, etc. records on hand.
• Vaccine Info: Their vaccination records and info handouts.
• Behavior/Discipline Info: I could probably do away with this section because I seem to own every book ever written on this subject…
• Important Docs for Each Kid

What I still need to add to this Kiddo Binder:

• Church Info for Religious Preparations

I have most of the school info {Emergency/Identification forms, school calendars, etc.}  in our Family/Household binder {up on the blog later this week!} It would make sense to keep it all in the Kid binder but that binder is already a bit maxed out, so it makes the most sense for us to keep the important school info in the Family/Household Binder.

So, I get that I have a lot of binders! And some that I don’t really use that often. But I love organization, and I’m not great at paperwork organization. I have been known to let piles of paper accumulate on my desk. I’m also one of those that if it’s outta sight, it’s outta mind. I totally, completely forget about it if it’s filed away. That works best if it’s something I only need to access once or twice a year and I know where it is. But I have found if it’s where I can see it, but organized, it works best for me. Thus, the million binders ;)

You could totally do this for pets as well. There is a lot of paperwork to keep for a pet, especially if you have more than one. We have one dog and I have two file folders for him in our file cabinet, but you could definitely adapt this for a pet, too!

Later this week it’s all about our Family/Household Binder and my Home Inspiration/Project Binder. And then I think I’ll be done with sharing the binder thing. For January at least. I did recently set up a Blogging Binder that is working great for me, and I will share soon. But I’ll give you all a break on the Binder Organizing after this week, I promise ;)

How’s your organizing going? I’m not really systemtatically going through my list, but I’m hitting kids’ closets and my desk area first. I shared a picture on Instagram of my daughter’s {finally!} finished big girl bed that I painted in Annie Sloan Chalk Paint after finding it on Craiglist and that caused some rearranging of her room. More on that to come. But a dresser had to be moved into the closet, which meant her closet was the first closet to tackle on my organizing list. And now it’s about a fourth of the way done, I need more containers, and I have made more of a mess than what was there before! Her bows are organized at least :) I’ll take those small victories and keep plugging away! So you keep going, too, if you have decided to join me in getting your home organized this year! I’ll be sharing pictures soon!