Planners-all digital(iPhone), paper or a mixture???

I am trying to decide if I want to invest in new planner pages for next year or if I should just get the best apps for what I am looking to do and just get really nice journals for the hand writing that I feel I must do daily.

Some of what I am looking for:

Grocery shopping/menu planning
freezer/pantry inventory-to stop over buying
budget pages
bill paying schedule
savings plan
school resources & planning
goals
attendance record
homeschool planner/daily schedule
ideas-for what ever
appointments
trips-and all the necessary info for them
van maintenance
a total inventory of what we actually have

all the stuff that I need to try to keep in one place and not loose.

I know there is a calendar already on the phone and I do use it, but there really isn't enough room for everything that I tend to try and jot in a day.

I was thinking of 2 pages per day that way, I have a small daily log of what we did for school, plus appointments, and just what ever notes. But then I want to be able to get to this stuff a year from now if needed. How can I get stuff off of my phone? I love that I can go back over the years and either pull my F.C. storage binder off of the shelf or a school yearbook/planner down. But I'd like to have them all in one book. I am also struggling between the Classic and full size sheet binder size. I have the classic, but everything else is a full sheet of paper.

I have several different homeschool planners, or software things where I can print out all the pages I need and make my own. Which I have done several times over the years. I just can't decide what I want.

I usually end up with two or three single subject spirals full of stuff-thoughts, bible verses, ideas, planning, just my journal, bills. You name it it ends up in there. But then I also have my planner where I tend to try and write a short synopsis of what we did for the day, even it was really nothing.

I have my bills under control as far as storage and I will be doing that again from now on. But I need a paper or list of what is due and when, where I can look at it often.

I like my phone and I using it all day, but I also like paper and pen very much. What would you do?

Workboxes

After looking at a few more blogs, I think that I have found the containers that we are going to use.



These with 6 drawers each but you can add more to them so I am going to get 10 of them so that each of the boys have 12 drawers. I have figured out what they will each do during the day. We will use funny faces on each drawer once they are finished with their work. These will also take up a lot less floor space than the shoe racks would. We just don't have the room to do the left and right aspect. But I do believe that if they can see that they funny faces are there then that will be good.

So far the ideas that I have for hands on/fun drawers are lots of math, arts & crafty things, science. So here is my list:

Draw Write Now books
Math Dice
Counting bears & scale w/activity cards
Frogs, logs and activity cards
Cuisenaire Rods & different books, Roddles
Lacing beads
Geo Shapes/Pattern blocks w/triangle tray or hexagon tray, different activity books
Geo boards and activity books
Dot to Dot books-numbers, letters, math puzzles
Word searches
paper airplane book-they have to copy the parts and put the plane together
Wikki Sticks and books
Can you find it? books
Geo puzzle
toob farm animals
Dr. Drew blocks
Klutz Lego book
Klutz How to build Castles
Snap Kits
Stained Glass coloring pages
Equate Game
Horse Bingo
Math book puzzles
Origami
Varies Art books
Lap Harp
Caluladder pages
Match It
Math War
Nature Study book
Water colors
Knights
Human Body pages-various workbooks & Enchanted Learning website pages
Building thinking skills -Not sure what books or software I am going to get yet.
Quilt block History of Pioneer days
Melissa and Doug wooden ABC's
The Story of the Orchestra by Robert Levine
Piano books
piano practice
guitar books
guitar practice
a wooden loom
Magnetic letters
Magnetic numbers

Their drawers so far are lining up like this:
Thomas Aric Noah Matthew Jadon
1Bible Bible Bible Bible Bible
2Hands Piano Snap LA/RA LA/RA
3LA/RA LA/RA LA/RA hands hands
4Piano hands Math Math math
5Art Math HWT HWT Art
6Math Art Piano Art Piano
7Science Science Science Piano HWT
8History History History hands Hands
9Snap HWT Art History History
10hands Snap @Piano Science Science
11HWT @Piano Hands @Piano hands
12@Piano Hands hands hands @Piano

Of course the 6 hands on/fun boxes will change, Piano will be every other day or I will rotate so that everyone gets time at the piano. Plus I am going to add in guitar books but we need to get a guitar first.

But this is the tentative plan for now. I am sure that as we start working things will change.

Downsizing, organizing, and planning

I am getting ready to downsize in a huge way. I am just feeling more and more that we are to give away things, but not somethings.

The children have way to many clothes, like buckets and buckets and buckets. I am not kidding. How this happened I really don't know because honestly I haven't really bought anything for anyone in the last 3 years. Socks, underwear, a pair of jeans for my supper skinny guys and shoes.

But even knowing this does not explain why I have at least 20 totes and that many large garbage bags full of clothing. Richard is just as bad, he has so many things that he doesn't even know what he has.

Now my clothing is pretty simple, I have two skirts that I wear on a regular basis and about 6 tops. I have a new work skirt laying on the ironing board waiting for elastic and to be hemmed.

I want to get everything cleaned sorted and just give it away. There is a few boxes around here for Hannah House and Kings Ranch that I could put the stuff into, there is also a church over in my Mom's town that has a thrift store that is currently asking for donations. Then there is always the 25 cent yard sale. Just put up a huge sign that everything is a quater each, might make a fortune. LOL probably not.

But then there is the stuff that just gets in my way, all the kitchen gadgets, the movies, and the tv. As much as I would love to send the tv away, there are good things about it, like those Planet Earth DVD's, we don't have Directv any more and I will probably leave it that way. We just have a Netflix subscription and what I find a Walmart. I finally bought Wall-E the other day and it is really cute, I might get them Bolt in a month or so. We are also looking at getting some fun DVD's for school work. I have seen where you can get all of the Magic School Bus. But before I get these things I need to get rid of a ton of others that we no longer watch or just don't want. Perhaps I will make a DVD box of movies and send them to my sister in Germany.

I would rather spend my extra money each month on books, puzzles, games and other things that are going to have a purpose. I love the fact that the boys can be doing something and they are learning but don't realize it.

So my goal for the rest of the month is to go through all of those bags first since they are really a pain to store. We are going to pull out 7 outfits each, once they have their 7 they will be able to change with a new bag if they see something else that they would like to keep, but other wise it is all going away.

Oh and I didn't even mention all of the books that we have. I am wanting to sort our books by subject, so that we have science, history, math, and so on. A lot of the books that we have are things that I was able to pick up for our school board back in FL. So they are old library books, most already have the Dewey system stickers on them. I have thought about using that to organize our books which would be a great learning tool, however our little library here doesn't use it. You can't even look up a book yourself you have to ask the librarian to do it for you. And the picture books are just there. The other library they have their books color coded based on the authors last name, that way you atleast know which cubby the books belong into.

The bonus here is once I get all of this done I will have a lot more space in that new storage barn. The faster it gets cleaned out and organized the faster I can make it our school house. The hardest part will be figuring out how to put AC out there without making a whole in the side. See I just ordered a stock building, you can have windows and such put in, but I just wanted a building to get us started. Richard has already mentioned something about getting a second one later. So what I will do is get a larger building with windows and a normal door.

The best part will of course be all the extra room in the house. The boys have been double bunking with Thomas & Caleb sharing, and Matthew & Jadon too. We really need to get that third set of bunkbeds up. I am praying that we will be able to add on or something in the next year or so. That would be the biggest help, to make a large boys bedroom, a smaller girls room, a true school room, and a family room. I can see in my head what I want, I just don't know if it will work.

Oh well I am off to sort clothing.

Going to do try something new.

The older boys seem to have serious issues with the very small amount of book/seatwork that they are required to do every day. So I have been reading about this Workbox, there are plenty of blogs on this subject and all the different ways that people are using it. Heather's blog was the first one I read and I really enjoy her's and have gained a lot of great ideas, not just for boxes but for just new things to add to our school.

So last week I went and got the shoe rack and the shoe boxes from Walmart. Not really wanting to go this route since I currently have 4 students and 2 more that are really on the move, and little miss on the fast tract and she's only 1. 7 children times 12 boxes is 84 boxes and at least 4 different shoe racks probably more, or a great bookcase.

So yesterday I was blog hopping and found a different idea that I am thinking will work better for us and take up a little less floor space(which we are very short on to begin with). Here is Ginger's blog post about how she is making it work. I really like this idea, plus I think that I could put a second set of three sets of drawers on top.

I am going to order the book probably tonight, I am still unsure of which way I want to order it yet.

Once I've actually read the book I will post more about it.