Murphy's Law

If it's going to break, it's going to break while he's away. That's the rule of deployments! I just read on a Marine Corps Spouses networking site that someone was needing to hear stories about this very thing to know she wasn't alone. She said something of the sort that her dog got stuck between 2 fences - neither were hers - and she had to call animal control to help her get the dog out! Nothing like calling animal control on yourself. People were consoling this woman with stories of their kids needing stitches, them getting in car accidents, wandering kids, surprise moves, snakes in homes, and so much more!

I guess all of that was my inspiration. I've created a binder in the past, but it hasn't been kept up to date. I decided that I needed to have all home "stuff" in one place so I can access most anything pretty easily. We've got all of our legal papers and stuff like that in one place too, so those can be found quickly. But the things that I wanted to have organized were the warranties and the users manuals for various things around the house.

We had a huge binder that was just laying around from when Lane was at TBS, so I used that and just got some dividers and plastic page protectors. I opened the drawer that we kept all that junk in and started making piles. When I was done I had more piles than I had dividers, so I started combining piles until I got the number of stacks that equalled the number of dividers. Here's what I came up with.

Kid/Baby
I have the manuals for their car seats, battery operated toys {great for if I want to consign them later!}, humidifiers, strollers, etc. These are the things that probably won't need to be accessed, but will come in handy for re-sale.

Electronics
This is everything that I don't consider an appliance. Our TVs, camera, phones, iPad, and things like that. This section is more important for warranties than for manuals. Most of the things in here are on the expensive side of the spectrum, so they have warranties with them. If something goes kaput, I want to know how and where to fix the problem without paying an arm and a leg.

Furniture
When you live close to an IKEA, you know your furniture comes with directions on how to assemble it. Though we don't have a ton of IKEA furniture, we have enough to need a section in our notebook. If you find that you're missing a screw to this or that it's nice to have the directions around. A lot of time you can get the hardware for different pieces of furniture if you're missing something at a later date. I've found this to be true of places other than IKEA, too.

 Home Improvement/Outdoor
With owning a home comes projects and improvements. When we had the tile re-done in our bathroom we had someone else install it for us. We also had someone do electric work for us. In case something goes wrong with any of that work I want to be able to remember who did what and when they did it. This section also includes the information for the outdoor heater, the grill, the lawnmower, and things like that.

 Appliances
This is the section for all things that don't fall into the electronics department. The vacuum, refrigerator, washer and dryer, microwave, oven, etc.

 The whole thing is in our laundry room cabinets {please ignore the misspelling, I didn't feel like going back to fix it when I realized that I was wrong. Spelling is not, nor has it ever been, my strong point!} The binder will hopefully stay there and collect dust, but if I need it, it's there!