Most of my friends might call me a mess. There's no rhyme or reason as to why I put anything anywhere. While my house is clean (most of the time), I couldn't tell you where anything important is.
Enter Gunner.
My uber organized husband that loves me dearly. After he went to Iraq the first time and I had to have my mom sign for housing because I couldn't find my POA--thank goodness he knows me and gave her a POA--he decided he needed to organize me.
He made me an Everything Book.
It was the best thing he could have done.
He made categories, printed out nice little labels, and spent weeks scouring the house for every important piece of paper. There's a section on the car--titles, insurance copies, dealer information. One on each child--shot records, passports, birth certificates, daycare information, school information. There's a deployment section with POA's, orders, rear d information. He included banking, credit cards, cable, job information, etc. You name it, it's in this gigantic white binder--housing, camps, contact numbers, addresses, etc.
It's time to start updating it now that we are in a new location. He'll sort through the piles of mail I don't open and start putting in all the vital information that I might need while he is gone, and if I ever have to go anywhere important, this book goes with me. (He's also learned and gets more than one POA for me, just in case!)
I won't have to search for anything.
I'm thinking this time he might want to include ideas of things to do or maybe races I can train for? Maybe a list of books for the kids to read that he loved at their respective ages.
Do you have one of these books? What do you put in it that I am missing?
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13 comments:
We have one of these books too. But I think yours has way more information than mine. We have the financial, investment, bills &legal sections. Maybe I should add some of your sections to mine too :-)
I got the idea from you last deployment! But mine needs so much work and major uber updating. 5 months left here too! Sounds like a good project for me to start getting organized.
I just have birth certificates, copies of social security cards, shot records, marriage certificate, and POAs. But I am going to take some ideas from you and put the car info in there too. Especially since my hubs LOST his car registration and I had to pay to get a copy anyways!
Oh I have one of these books... its more like two books actually.
I have copies of all of our medical records from where ever we have been and whatever dr we have seen! I know that may seem really overly prepared... but I just moved from WA to PA, and I am moving back to the west coast again in July! It is so much easier to go a few months before a move and get all that information copied to go right into your files. Then when the babe is rushed to the ER or emergency clinic you can bring it along and pull out his records all right there instead of trying to reach a Dr in another time zone.
Here are my folders: (and I have a POA for each section)
Car
Dental
Medical (with manila folders for each individual person)
Personal (one for each of us with birth certificates and social cards ect)
Housing (if I would want to move on base)
Rental agreements
Red-Cross forms
Banking
Credit card accounts
School paperwork (transcripts, loans, ect)
There is a lot more but thats all off the top of my head.
A good bill pay organizational tool is an excel worksheet I have made up myself. I could email it to you if you would like! I update it at the end of each week. Mine is formatted to hold two bank account balances (michaels and mine) and then a section for all bills that need to be paid monthly. This helps you see the exact balance each month and which bills have been paid so far that month.
I am the organized freak in my family! OCD really. My favorite part of my week is updating that excel worksheet!
We have one of those too, only I am the (sort of) organized one of the family! Yours sounds more in depth than mine, we just keep the wills and POAs in there, along with some financial info that my dh is in charge of. Otherwise I am the keeper of the household files, so most everything else I already have a folder for.
I'm still thinking about the questions from your last post, but you've had more deployments than me, so maybe you should just give me advice? :)
Korin! We have one too and it's white also! Great minds think alike! Miss you!
Abbey
Luckily I am the organised one, my husband rarely knows where anything is. I am in awe of US army wives who put up with 12 month deployments, we Brits complain about doing 6 months. My husband has not been away since we've had children so I wait to see how I will cope when it happens. Keep smiling, you are in my thoughts.
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hmmm your husband sounds like my husband. maybe its a military thing? I don't so much have an everything book for around the house{althought I should its a great idea} I tend to have a bunch of "organized" piles of themed stuff, all the medical stuff for dash1 in one folder, all flyboys work numbers and people to call when hes away and something is wrong, house info, etc.
But. my pride and joy. Is my kitchen everything book. I tear out pages and print out recipes {or cute cake ideas or cookies or something I'll want to try later in the year} and put them in a folder in those plastic sleeves. It's quite the book nowdays.
That's awesome that he did that for you. I'd have to be the one to give my husband an Everything Book though, lol.
Yay for your husband!! It's just the opposite with us and I'm the one who is organized. I have an expanding file folder instead of a book but the same concept.
Hugs!
It's a good thing you have a husband that will put that together for you. I have a husband like that too, he's put together my "in case of death" file with all the important things in it, unfortunately if something happens to me he's going to have to have a 'treasure' hunt through closets, drawers, the basement ...just about everywhere.
I see that you are in the Springs, if ever you are in Denver let me know I'd love to meet you.
Laura, A Military Mom
Wow! You are way way more organized than I am!
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