How to Make a Family Organizer

Create a family organizer to collect all of your family's important phone numbers, addresses and household account numbers. Keeping a paper address book neat and updated is much easier when you make your own family organizer. With a family organizer it's easier to change addresses and phone numbers when friends and family move. A family organizer allows makes it easier to keep track of household accounts, utility contact information, as well as home maintenance schedules.

Things You'll Need

• Three-ring binder
• Nine sheets of card stock
• Eight tabbed dividers
• Marker
• 30 Sheets blank paper
• Three-ring hole punch

Instructions

1. Collect any address books and phone number sheets you have. Add the stack of current bills to the pile to find utility account and contact information. Also have your cell phone or online address book handy. All of the addresses, phone numbers and utility contact information will come together in one convenient place, the family organizer.

2. Write out alphabet letters on the eight tabbed dividers. With a standard package of eight tabs, the the first six tabs can include three letters each. Label the first tab "ABC," the second tab "DEF," and continue through the first six tabs. The seventh and eighth tabs will have four letters each, "STUV" and "WXYZ." Open the binder and place all of the indexed tabs inside. This will keep the family organizer neat and tidy.

3. Punch holes in the nine sheets of card stock. Open the binder and place one sheet of card stock in the front. Label this page as the "Quick Guide" where emergency and frequently-called phone numbers may be written.

4. Transfer all of the names, phone numbers and addresses from your address books and cell phones onto the appropriate sections. Create a new sheet each time you start a new section. Remember to include doctor's phone numbers, the contact information for the cable company, the electric company, the phone company, the garbage collectors, the paper boy and the water company.

5. Create a separate sheet for each family member, filed under the first letter of their name. Include contact information for their doctor, dentist, eye doctor, specialist and the orthodontist. Also include phone numbers of their friends.

6. Add a calendar or schedule for seasonal maintenance to the family organizer. Include relevant phone numbers and details about your experience with the service you previously received. This section of the family organizer may include information for landscaping companies, snow plowing companies, tree cutting specialists or paint contractors.

Tips & Warnings

• Write down new information in the family organizer right away.

• Ask your kids for their friends' phone numbers and include them in the family organizer.

• Recycle out old or outdated sheets and replace them with new one, something you can't do with a standard address book.

• Keep bank pin numbers and bank account numbers in a separate, secure place.

• Do not store all of your information in one electronic device, which may break or not be charged when you need it.

• Write the information in more than one place in the book, to make it easy for all family members to use.

• Update the family organizer as needed.