Organizing Your Life with Printables

Today, I’m going to talk about organizing your life with printables – creating a life binder to reference all the things you need to keep track of. When we talk about organizing our lives, one of the things we shouldn’t forget about are the SOPs and important information of our lives.

You know how it is when you’re looking for a piece of information and you have to dig through a file cabinet or a pile on your desk and hope you can find it. Maybe you’re still creating systems and routines to track different areas of your life. Creating a life organization binder can help with all those things.

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Benefits of a Life Binder

The biggest benefit of organizing your life with printables is that you can completely customize your binder. Creating your own binder gives you total control and it makes it super easy to make changes as your life circumstances change.

Some people try to find a planner that will have all of the necessary pages they need. I’m not going to say that’s impossible because I sell a Build Your Perfect Planner course. However, the focus is just on planning. A home organization binder is so much more than a planner.

And for my people with executive dysfunction, I recommend a life binder separate from their planner so it’s not too overwhelming. That said, if it makes more sense for you to have one massive binder so everything is at your fingertips, go for it.

In addition to customizing the binder and the information inside it, printables allow you to find a style and layout that suit you. If you want something that is minimalist in black and white to save on ink, you can find it. If you think black and white is boring and you need bright colors keep you motivated, you can find that too.

Printables tend to be very budget-friendly. You can find them in many places, including Etsy and my shop. Once you buy them, you can print as many pages as you want, which saves time and money because you don’t have to replace them yearly like you do a planner.

Because you can find printables to help you manage pretty much anything, you can use them for everything from a plan to declutter your house to master to-do lists to creating regular schedules and routines.

And finally, using printable means you don’t have wasted pages because you only print the ones that suit you and that you’ll actually use. Often, when you buy a planner, there are whole sections that you never touch and it’s a waste of space.

Where to find Printables

As I mentioned, printables are all over. They have become more popular in recent years, especially since the cost of printers and ink is so much less than it used to be. The hardest part about finding printables will be deciding which ones will be the best for you so that you don’t waste your money buying things you don’t need.

Here are some places to look:

Bloggers

So many bloggers (like me) have created printable pages for their customers. If you google organization printables or binder printable pages, you will find tons of online shops. Pinterest is another way for you to conduct the same search.

Etsy

Etsy has millions of pages all in one place. It’s easy to scroll and easy to download once you buy. If you know what style you like, you can even get specific and search for something like boho-themed binder printables.

Hot Tip: Look for freebies! Both bloggers and Etsy sellers will often offer some freebies so you can sample the kind of pages the person creates. You can even search for free printable binder pages and find ones you can use. This will allow you to experiment before you fully commit with your wallet.

Types of printables

As mentioned, organizing your life with printables is fully customizable, so you need to think about what you need to keep track of before you go shopping for pages. If you go in without some ideas of your own, you might be lured to buy big packages that are filled with things you’re not interested in. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Checklists
• Blank lists
• To-do lists
• Daily routines
• Daily or weekly planner
• Goals tracker
• Master to-do list
• Budget trackers
• Cleaning schedule
• Meal planner
• Grocery list
• Organization challenge
• Passwords
• Addresses and phone numbers
• Chore chart
• Important Dates
• Travel list
• Packing list
• Party planner
• Emergency information
• Fridge inventory

Features to look for

If you’ve never used printables before, there are some things you want to consider. How structured do you want the pages to be? Do you want things already filled in for you or would you prefer a more open template to fill in yourself?

When you’re looking at printables, make sure there’s enough space to write. This is going to vary by person because some people write big and others have tiny handwriting. In addition, if you know you like to make extra notes to yourself, make sure the pages you’re looking at offer a notes section.

Consider the design. If the pages only come in color, but you plan to print in black and white, will it look okay? Or are the colors so dark that it will inhibit you writing in certain sections? Look at borders and layout. If you use a regular hole punch, are you going to be cutting into anything important?

Putting together your life binder

1. Choose Your Categories

As I mentioned above, you need to have some ideas about what you want to include in your binder. Of course, as you start looking at printables, you might get some new ideas, and that’s fine, but before you can build your binder, you need to know what to look for. Here are some ideas for organization:

• Cleaning and decluttering schedules
• Meal planning and groceries
• Home maintenance, remodeling, and inventory
• Personal information – health records, health tracking, insurance information, etc
• Financial tracking and planning
• Hobby trackers
• Brain dumps or master to-do lists
• Business/side hustle organization

2. Choose a good quality binder that you like.

The binder is something you’re going to spend some time with, so if you think it’s ugly or boring, you won’t be motivated to use it. You also want to make sure it can hold up to a lot of use.

3. Find a 3-hole punch.

I have a 3-hole punch from my teaching days, but I realize not everyone does. If you don’t want to buy one, you might be able to go to an office supply store like Staples or Office Max and use one in their copy center. It’s not like you’re using up a resource.

4. Use decent paper and print quality.

Even if you’re just using black and white, make sure your ink is good so your pages are clear.

5. Consider dividers and tabs.

When you have a binder with many different sections, you want to be able to flip from one section to the next without having to search. Remember, the key here is to make your life easier not harder.

6. Use sheet protectors where it makes sense.

You won’t want to use protectors on all pages. Not only would that be a waste of money, but it would also be useless because you’ll need to routinely write on some of these pages. Protect the pages that you only use for reference. For example, you might have a page of information that you keep for babysitters. Another reference page might be one that has insurance information or vaccination records.

Creating a binder to house all of the most important information in your life might seem daunting at first, but if you take some time to plan and work on it one section at a time, it can end up being an awesome tool to organize your life.

Creating a routine for using the binder

As much as I’d love to tell you that creating the binder is all you have to do, I can’t. Creating the binder takes the most work, but if you don’t actually use it regularly, then you’re not going to get all of the possible benefits from it.

There might be sections in your planner that you don’t need to use regularly. Things like home inventories or health insurance will only have to be updated periodically—maybe annually unless you have some major life changes. But if you’re truly using the binder to organize your life, you should be using other sections much more regularly—possibly even daily.

Because of this, you want to build time into your schedule for checking your binder. You probably won’t need tons of time 15-30 minutes should be plenty. But you want to find a consistent block of time to check. If you don’t have a consistent schedule for checking, let’s face it, it’s not gonna happen. Creating a daily routine for checking your binder will help keep you on track.

Organization habits

When you consider finding a block of time for checking your binder, you want to think about the habits you’re trying to build.

• What areas of your life are you trying to organize more?

• What do you need to keep regular track of?

• What are your biggest priorities right now?

Knowing the answers to these questions helps you determine the daily routines you need to create in order to be a more organized person. These questions will also inform you of any other printables that you might need to add to your binder.

Daily printables

The last thing to consider as you build your binder is which printables you will use daily. As I said, some pages are just reference so you have information when you need it without stressing about where to look—insurance information, health records, etc.

If you are trying to get your house more organized, you might need to check the binder daily for decluttering checklists or to check your cleaning schedule for the week. If you’re tracking your expenses or implementing a savings plan, you might be checking daily, but weekly might work better for you. You need to really think about what makes sense and what’s doable for you.

Double-team your binder and planner—put reminders in your planner when you know you need to add information to your binder and put things from your binder (like a meal plan or cleaning schedule) in your planner.

Having a life organization binder will help you keep track of ALL THE THINGS without having an unwieldy planner to lug around.

Organizing your life with printables is not a quick solution, like most major changes. It will take many steps from choosing the right printables to assembling the binder to implementing a routine for using the binder. The process will lead to a more organized, less chaotic life as you reap the benefits of your hard work.