Do you have a household notebook?

I first learned about household notebooks from Flylady and her Control Journal.

Basically, this is a notebook that holds all the important household information that keeps your family running.  Stuff you probably keep in your head.  Stuff that would be helpful if you weren’t around – and I’m not just talking if you were to pass away suddenly.  It could also be a fun, temporary absence like a vacation or girl’s night out.

When I was suddenly hospitalized last year because of my stomach issues, I must have gotten a dozen texts from John asking questions that could have been quickly answered if he’d had a family resource book to turn to.  Similarly, I went to a retreat and got a frantic call from John that one of the sinks had begun to leak in spectacular fashion and what was the number of our plumber?  A household notebook would have helped in this case too.

Does your family know which Chinese food restaurants deliver?  Do they have the number for the power company if the power goes out?

So that’s the biggest reasons to make this kind of resource but more importantly, you get the information OUT OF YOUR HEAD.  I know that the human brain has an amazing capacity to learn and remember but I find sometimes that I just don’t have the memory that I pretend that I used to.  Truth is, that we all have trouble with bandwidth.  Truth is that there are so many things happening in a day that we cannot possibly remember everything or, for that matter, be responsible to remember it all.

Over the next few days, I’m working on putting together my own household notebook and I will share with you how I do it and what I include.

Does your family have a household notebook?