My Big Book of Disorder and Chaos

One of the things that I often read about on the snooty and well organized homemaking blogs that I like to read when I'm not feeling bad enough about myself, is the homemaker's planner. The Binder. The Big Book. The organizational tool to beat all organizational tools, which tells the happy homemaker what to do.

One of the things that I often read about on the snooty and well organized homeschooling blogs that I like to read when I'm not feeling bad enough about myself, is the home-school mother's planner. The Binder. The Big Book. The organizational tool to beat all organizational tools, which tells the happy homeschooling mother what to do.

Hmmmm. Those two paragraphs have a lot in common, don't they? Since I do both, perhaps I need a planner?

I do have my day-planner with the spaces that Franklin-Covey thinks I need. But I always end up scrawling information in the margins and writing important things clear across the much-ignored squares on the monthly calendar page and then reading the entire thing if I want to retrieve that information.

And I tried to make myself a housekeeping binder a few years ago. I didn't use it much and it represented what someone else told me I needed, instead of what I needed. And besides: Needs change, homes even change, and home cleaning chores are not things I need a binder to nag me about. Woo Hoo...three rings of guilt. No thank you. I can tell when my house is dirty all by my self.

But I have decided that I do need something. I've chosen to call it my Big Book of Disorder and Chaos. I've yet to invest in my real BBODAC, and am using an embryonic starter version consisting of a one inch binder with notebook paper in it.

Currently the chaos part comes into play in that it is lacking tabs and dividers, and the notes I took on the kids' future school work plan (woo hoo, I've written out lessons for the next month or so and taken the un out of unschooling) are all in there willy nilly along with grocery lists, random notes I've already forgotten about, Bible notes and some journaling.

So, instead of telling you, fair reader, that you need a binder of your own, and that you, fair reader, have to make a binder just like mine...or else the homemaking/homeschooling fairies will smite thee...I'll just humbly offer this nugget:

What if, with the Big Book of Disorder and Chaos, some sort of order bubbles up to the surface that will actually be usable? What if logic and expedience is used to guide what happens next? Like, for instance, I might decide to create a tab divider for each of my kids and make it easier to find those pages where I've written down their lessons. Or I might decide that I need a place for menu planning.

Et Cetera.

It ain't rocket science. And after a few weeks of embryonic chaos with my Big Book of Disorder and Chaos I know three things: 1) I need more paper. 2) an embryonic system of Dividers would be nice. 3)Fabulous pens are worth it (I like those free flowing ink ones) and 4)nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.