Creating Your Atomic Mom Binder

Are you on Pinterest looking at photos of super organized homes, dreaming of the day when yours can look just that picture perfect? No matter how organized I am, I always find beautiful photos that inspire me to do more.

Let’s be honest. No one’s home looks that great overnight. A lot of time and hard works goes into organizing a home into something both functional and easy to keep up with.

My last post hopefully helped you to better manage your time and keep up with plans and activities. And while I’m sure you’re ready to delve headfirst into organizing your entire home, I’d like to start with something small but oh so important. Documents.

When I say documents, I don’t mean every piece of paper that you file away in a cabinet, drawer, or shoe box somewhere. I mean the most important, need fairly often, take with you during an emergency type of documents. In the past, for me, this has included birth/marriage certificates, social security cards, immunization records, and physicals. Because of my husband’s job in construction, we have moved quite a bit. Every time we moved, we needed these documents to enroll our kids in school and update our ID/driver’s license.

Moving to Texas, where there are hurricane and flooding threats, and possible evacuations, inspired me to add a few more very important documents to the list. Home owners and vehicle insurance policies are something you will want to be able to find quickly. Health and life insurance policies should also be included. You may choose to store the original documents elsewhere, but keeping a copy in a binder that is easily accessible to you is always a good plan of action.

A few documents that don’t always occur to people to keep in a handy place are custody agreements, adoption/fostering records, copies of state IDs and/or driver’s licenses, lease agreements, and titles to vehicles and property.

Through our many adventures in packing up and moving to a new city or state, I’ve learned that a binder system is the best way for me to keep my documents accessible. For safe keeping at home, it’s easy to put the entire binder into a fireproof safe. When I need the documents, they are easy to find and transport. There is no digging and searching for papers you havent seen in years. And in the event of an emergency, your documents are there. Grab them and go!

The great thing about this system is that you can add documents as needed. There is no limit to what you can put in.

*A tip for those of you that really want to save everything: scan documents, photos, etc. onto a usb drive, put it on a key ring and attach it to the ring inside your binder. Not only do you have a copy of your documents, but possibly a ton of memories that could potentially be lost in a disaster.*

Using tabbed dividers is a great way to be able to flip to the documents that you need quickly. Especially if you need more than one. I also use page protectors for each document or copy. This ensures they are protected when I have to carry the binder to a different location. The fireproof safe proves to be a safe place. My car… not so much! For Social Security cards and Hunter’s Education cards, I use a nine pocket card album page. Most often, these are used for baseball cards, but they are perfect for any cards you need to store. I found mine at Hobby Lobby, but many stores carry them and you can always find them on Amazon.

This post may not have helped you organize your way to a picture perfect Pinterest house, but hopefully you were able to complete this task from start to finish and get a little peace of mind. Gone are the days of searching an endless number of drawers to find a single piece of paper.

As a bonus, I have included the printables I use in my personal binder here: Atomic Mom Binder Printables

Do you have an efficient system for your important papers? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!