Steps 18 & 19: Home Management Journal

Step 18

From Flylady.net:

Do you know how we have to hunt for phone number and addresses all over our home and in our computers. Now this baby step is going to help us put all of our phone number and addresses in a hard copy. This is your back up in case your computer crashes or your palm pilot.

So set up a section for this in your Control Journal. Do not obsess about this. You don’t even need ABC dividers if you don’t have room. Just a letter at the top of the page will do nicely. Write them in pencil, because they will change and you know how we hate messed up pages. LOL

Start with:

NAME Phone Number
Address Cell Number
City Work Number
State
Memo

Any other info you might want to add; Children’s Names or a memo about who they are in case someone that doesn’t know them is using your control journal to contact your friends and family. For Instance this is my mother’s next door neighbor or my sister’s best friend. If they are someone I like to send cards to then I put birthdates and anniversary date here too.

Keep in mind you don’t have to do this all at one time. You can build this, one address at a time, as you find your little stashes of them hidden in junk drawers, under piles of clutter, in old purses and on notepads stashed all over the house. Oh and don’t forget those old Christmas card envelopes you have been holding on to. Just think those can go in the trash after you do this.

Step 19

From Flylady.net

I believe that this is the last Control Journal babystep that I am going to give you. This document is personal to you. You can keep it private or you can have it out for your whole family to use. Mine stays at home. I do not take it with me unless it is an emergency.

This next section is for just those times. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY!

You are going to need to know insurance numbers. I like to make copies of the cards and you will need to update them each time

you get a new card. You have already listed the phone numbers of people to contact in a emergency.

Also here is the tough section. In the event that you are evacuated from your home for hurricane, forest fire, flood, or any kind of disaster. You need an list of things that you would want to take with you and where they are. In times like this we can’t think so our control journal thinks for us because we took the time to write these things down.

Here is an essay I wrote last year about this. You don’t have to do it right this minute, just printing it out and putting it in this section is a good start. Then next week on anti-procrastination day you can begin to take the babysteps to be prepared for any disaster.

You can do this. Just having this section in your control journal is going to help you to stay calm.

My take on it:

I don’t like having this in the HMJ, I prefer to keep these documents on me or have copies of them at a family member/friends house. Just in case the HMJ gets lost, etc.

However, it’s up to you if you want to add these items or not.

Have a great day!