My Faithful Personal Assistants

After creating a new binder for the Liturgical Year and placing it along side my other current binders, I got to thinking about how indispensable they have become to me. This is something that has evolved over the years... and the binders that actually get used have changed out, though some have long been faithful friends. Often it depends on what I am doing and how I am doing it.

For example, for a while, I had a Flylady binder that I accessed every day. Or one that had more structured lessons in which I planned and implemented. But this bevy of beauties are the current ones that grace my window sill. They are in easy reach as I sit at my computer, the place I do most of my planning and thinking. The computer is my window to the world--- to the ideas I garner from my friends on blogs and lists, the invaluable online search at my library, Amazon, and the endless website of ideas.

So, unlovely as they are... here they sit. Serving me well. I must again credit Cindy Rushton for first introducing me to the binder idea!

From left to right, here are my faithful friends:

1) Spirals where I journal. These two are the Clonlara journals I use only for my discussions and questions to my advisor. I could probably publish her wisdom and make a million! The spiral journal I used for daily activity sits out on the dog kennel in the kitchen where I have handy access in hopes I will write in it daily. :)

2) Home Education, Journal and Notes
This has been with me for years. It was my centralized place for everything. When I traveled and wanted to think or plan, this was the one binder I took. For a while it held lessons plans and subject areas, all my journals and notes. It has the lists of books we all have read. It has dividers by subject area where I put ideas for resources. It used to have my journal of what we did before I moved to the spiral. It has changed over the years and now I am more decentralized, but is still an integral part.

3) Clonlara High School
This is the binder that Clonlara sent me when I signed S up there. Lots of great info there.. how we do our credit reports, book lists, etc. A lot of it I don't use right now, but like what I do need at my fingertips.

4) Resources
A new addition to my little party as I became more interest led and S makes plans to go follow up in areas he wants/needs to persue. It has dividers by subject and I jot down what I find in there. I have not used it a lot yet. Often it seems it takes a while to get in the habit of using a binder. Overlap here between this binder and the one above that had resources by subject... but I found the ones in that binder were old.. and not as useful since I wrote them years ago! Time for some clean out!

5) HTML
B put this in the line up when he was doing some coding last month. It is print out of HTML coding instructions we pulled off the Internet. I think it needs to be moved out...

6)Booklists and Resources
And old friend. I started this binder years ago when I got overwhelmed looking online at all the great booklists out there! So, I printed off my favorites and put them in the binder. Now when I want to look for some resources, I can leisurly thumb through and write in notes of what we have used, liked, could not find, etc. A dear old friend.

7) Little Black Book
This gem is something I started gosh, 8 years ago or so! When I was first trying to learn what living books were and reading all the booklists and my head was spinning... I got myself a little black address book with tabs. When I heard of a good book to try I would enter it. I carried the book everywhere with me. When I visited libraries, garage sales, used book stores I would have it to ask for titles or check and see if books there were on my list. I really was a help, especially in the early years when I was just learning about books. I don't use it as much now since I have become more familiar with authors and am not buying as many books. But maybe I should start using it again... humm...

8) Liturgical Year
The new kid on the block. So far it holds some pages about All Saints' and All Souls' Day. Soon it will have more... Advent, Christmas, etc. I plan to make notes of what we read, recipes we liked and weed out what did not work. By this time next year I should have some nice resources. Then I can add more as the years go on, will probably end up getting a thicker binder, and then can have all these neat ideas to do with my grand kids in years to come. :) (Thinking ahead!)

9) Useful Computer Information
Without this binder you would not be reading this. This has all my passwords, account numbers, fix-its for computer problems.. everything that keeps me on line!

10) 2005-2006 Clonlara Records
This is new this year. I love this binder. This has the summary of the year of what S did al year from my journal. (and really B, too, but only S is doing official credits)
I love it because now S is becoming part of it. Before it was just me keeping records, but now he and I activly go through it, and write up credits. His stamp is on it. So far we have written up three.

11) Little gray box on the far right side
This is my external hard drive that backs up all the great stuff on my computer. Small, but mighty.

So, my life really boils down to a few binders, but there they are. This was fun. ;)