My Binder System for Organizing My Office and My Life

I am a binder queen. I keep binders for many different areas of my life: recipes, finances, workouts. They keep me organized and sane in the areas of my life where I could easily lose all sense of control.

My recipe binder is a very important part of my kitchen. It is full of recipes from magazines, friends, and online that I have collected over the years. Some people keep their recipes on the computer, but I prefer my binder with its well-used, splattered pages. The first page in the binder is a master list of my family's favorite, quick fix, healthy meals.

My financial binder holds my monthly to-do list, my yearly goals, our Family Balance Sheet, our family budget, and our business budget and statistics.


I keep separate binders for our Business Expenses & Statements, Business Taxes, Health Savings Account, Retirement, my passwords (with alphabet tabs), and Workouts.

PK (pre-kids), I trained and competed in sprint and Olympic distance triathlons. I am as slow as molasses, but I really had a blast and took my training seriously. Remember, it was before kids, so I had loads of time to train and workout. This year, I am contemplating running a half-marathon this year, so I got out my Training binder. I use this binder to store training plans, articles, and my training calendar.


I had to chuckle when I saw my training calendar from 2004, the year before our first daughter was born. I wrote "Loser" on June 24 and the funny thing is I remember doing it. I totally blew off my workout that day.


Aside from the large 4 inch binder for our office expenses, I haven't spent a fortune on these books. They were all bought during the back-to-school promotions at Staples or Office Max for about $1 each. I am a bit obsessive about them being all white. I find it visually calming. But I have seen a variety of binders at yard sales and thrift stores for pocket change.

Do you use binders to stay organized? Let us know in the comments.


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Create a Monthly To-Do List To Keep Yourself On Task

Like everyone else, it always seems like I have too many balls in the air at once. I am a wife, mother, home manager, business manager for our small business, and a woman who would also like to read an occasional book or maybe take an occasional yoga class.

Around the time our second daughter was born, I found myself so overwhelmed and distracted that I missed paying the rent for our business office. I also got severely behind on some Quickbooks work for our business. Important tasks were slipping through my sleep deprived mind.

I had to refocus and basically suck-it-up. We are self-employed; no maternity leave for me.

I developed a monthly to-do list. It is broken down by my office jobs: business office, home office, and projects. It is filled with tasks that MUST be accomplished on a regular, timely basis. Tasks might be as simple as 'reconciling' or more complex like 'paying the payroll taxes'. I definitely have 'Pay Rent' on the list.

It is a visual reminder that I keep on my desk so I am able to glance at it daily. At the end of each month, I prepare the following month's list and make any changes for that month, but most of the tasks really don't change much, except for the 'Projects' list.

This simple, yet effective, list has saved me a lot of stress and time. I find great satisfaction in crossing off the tasks when they are complete...especially the 'pay the rent' task.

How do prevent those regular, yet important, tasks from slipping through the cracks?

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Kung Pao Chicken

Very easy to make.

Very yummy to eat.

Enough said.

Kung Pao Chicken
adapted from Cooking Light

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 12 oz bag of frozen petite broccoli florets
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 Tbsp water
• ½ tsp crushed red pepper
• 1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into small bite size chunks
• ½ cup homemade chicken broth, or store bought
• 2 Tbsp hoisin sauce - found in the Asian food section of your grocery store
• 2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 2 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 Tbsp coarsely chopped peanuts or cashews, optional

Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a large nonstick skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Add broccoli and 1 tsp ginger to pan. Stir and cook for 1 minute. Add water and cover. Cook for 3-4 minutes. Remove broccoli from pan and keep warm.

Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in the pan. Add 1 tsp ginger, crushed pepper and chicken. Stir and cook until chicken is cooked though and lightly browned.

Combine broth, hoisin, vinegar, soy sauce, cornstarch and garlic in a small bowl and whisk together. Add this mixture to the chicken in the pan and bring to a boil. Stirring constantly. Reduce heat and stir until mixture thickens, a couple of minutes. Return broccoli to pan and mix together until well-blended.

Serve over your favorite rice and sprinkle with peanuts or cashews on top.

Print this recipe.

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This post is linked to:

• $5 Dollar Dinner Challenge
• Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam
• Real Food Wednesday at Kelly the Kitchen Kop
• Foodie Friday at Designs by Gollum

Odd$ and End$ - One Pesky Virus Can Ruin A Snow Day

We had a snow day on Wednesday. And while it was fairly mild compared to last year's Snowpocalypse...

...my daughter's school was still canceled.

All I could think about was a day at home where I could get some things accomplished. Cookies needed to be baked, house work needed to be done, bills that needed to be paid, blog posts needed to be written and snow balls needed to be formed. Yes, I was looking forward to the day off.

But this all came to a screeching halt when my youngest started to get sick around 10am and continued to be sick into the evening. My day was spent sitting on the couch with her in my arms and washing loads of puked-on laundry. She needed and wanted her mama and I realized that I needed to get over my anxiety that nothing was going to get done and just be in the moment comforting my daughter.

As for my oldest daughter, she had the best day EVER, because she got to watch way too much TV as mommy was attending to her little sister.

I did get a little web reading done and my babe is feeling much better.

Personal Finance around the web:

• Festival of Frugality at Cash Money Life. Lots of great posts.
• How to Take Control of Your Finances in 2011 at Get Rich Slowly. A must read!
• Debt Free for Life: An Interview with David Bach at Man Vs. Debt
• 9 Frugal Hacks to Save Money in the Kitchen at Organizing Your Way
• Free Envelope Template and Tutorial for those of you using a cash envelope budget @ Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs

Food Around the Web:

• You Can Make Your Own Yogurt at Kitchen Stewardship
• Caramel Hot Chocolate at Lynn's Kitchen Adventures. She had me at caramel.
• Broiled Grapefruit at A Few Short Cuts. Who knew?

Deals From Around the Web:

• Join Zulily for Daily Deals for Moms, Kids and Babies.


• Get 1 FREE Photo Calendar! Choose from a Wall or Desk Calendar to enjoy your favorite photos year round! Click Here

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Planning for Christmas 2011

Does the sight of a Christmas tree make you want to hurl? Does it make you cringe to even think about Christmas? I can just hear some readers screaming, "it is 347 days away for crying it out loud".

What makes me cringe is realizing how much we spent on Christmas in 2010. Since we use credit cards for almost all of our purchases, we are paying the bills now for our Christmas presents. And even though we have the money to pay the bills off completely, I am still a bit queasy as I push the send button on my online bill payer.

As an experiment, I switched to cash in 3 categories: groceries, dining out and clothing on January 1st. I have now decided to add gift giving to the list of cash categories. I added up what we spent on gifts for the entire year in 2010 and reduced that by 20%. I then divided that new number by 12 and that is the dollar amount that I am going to transfer to a savings account every month. I'll use that money through out the year for birthday gifts along with Christmas presents in December.

I'm hoping that if I plan now, I'll spend less later.

Have you started to think about your Christmas spending for 2011? It is only 347 days away.

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Image: Paul / FreeDigitalPhotos.net