Since setting up my Home Management Notebook, I have been about as productive as I have ever been. Apparently, I am very task driven and a checklist motivates me more than any treat-based system! Since using the weekly cleaning checklist provided by Simple Mom, I have been able to get more housework done and certainly feel more on top of those household chores.

Today, though, I decided to make my own so that it would fit with our rooms. There were some tasks on the original list that weren’t relevant (e.g. refill soap) and I was tempted to remove items that I didn’t think were necessary to do on a weekly basis (e.g. cleaning the windows!) but I refrained since I realised I probably should be doing these, or at least aspiring to! Download your own version by clicking here: weekly checklist (.doc) - I have provided a word .doc version so you can amend it yourself (unless you have a daughter called Evelina, this will not be very useful!).

The original list also had daily and monthly items at the bottom as a reminder – I have separated these out onto a separate sheet which I will print once to include as a Master checklist:

I still have some work to do on the notebook. I want to think about the following possible sections to include:

Dinner Plan Area – Simple Mom uses Google Calendar but as I mentioned before, I don’t think that will work for me as I don’t want to allocate meals to each day. Instead I will set up a Master Meal List and keep a fortnightly list of the ones I am planning to make.

Master Grocery List – this does seem like something I would like to set up – it will make shopping (and more importantly, preparing for shopping) so much quicker as I will be able to tick off the things I need from the list rather than write a new list each time.

Monthly Budget – in line with our financial review, we have set up a basic budget but I really need to revisit this and have it part of my Home Management Notebook so that I can keep on top of our spending.

Master Project List – we currently use Wunderlist for our house projects and to dos and this works wonderfully since it can sync between all our various devises and it is easy to share lists so Rich and I can edit and use the same lists.  If you are looking for an online and desktop task manager, I would definitely recommend it.

In fact, I find using Wunderlist complementary to using the paper-based notebook.  Last night, I was getting into bed and when I go to bed, I usually have either my phone or my iPad to hand. I hadn’t filled in my Daily Docket for today so I created a new list in Wunderlist and jotted down my 10 to-do list items before I forgot them.  This morning, I copied out the list into my Daily Docket – I usually could keep my notebook out somewhere visible so I can keep referring to it throughout the day and tick things off as I accomplish them.  This visual reminder is why a written to-do list works so much more effectively more me – if I only keep my list on my electronic devices, inevitably, I will get sidetracked and at bedtime, I will realise I forgot something important.

If you are constantly feeling like you are drowning in household chores and tasks, then I can’t recommend this system enough.  That said, I acknowledge that this works particularly well given my proclivity to ticking off tasks. I have been known to write tasks on my to-do list that I have already finished so that I can tick them off. It’s a shame, isn’t it.