When blogger Elizabeth and her friend Kim took on the challenge to create household notebooks, they aimed high.

Deciding to create more than just a simple binder for household information, they envisioned their notebooks as "living books" that would help teach their daughters to keep house.

In these posts, Elizabeth shares her Foss Family Home Companion, while Kim outlines her Family Management Journal. Both notebook tours go further: they explain the thinking behind these two young mothers' decision to create order for their families, now and for the future.

Don't miss Kim's downloadable dividers and forms in Microsoft Word format. Check them out:

Elizabeth's Family Home Companion

Kim's Home Management Journal

Home Management Journal - The Basics

Home Management Journal - Housekeeping

Home Management Journal - Cleaning Forms and Lists

Printers ready? Here's a super resource for freezer cooking: printable labels for frozen foods. They've got that Martha style, but come with a super innovation: an embedded calendar to make it easy to mark the "frozen on" date.

Martha advises using a full-page label paper to create stick-on labels, but it's simpler and cheaper to print on inkjet paper and slide the label between double freezer bags.

The printable is in .pdf format, so you'll need the free Adobe Reader to print:

Freezer Labels to Print

How do working mothers manage menus and meal planning? Working mom Leslie Kaufman's story (published in no less than the venerable New York Times) shares valuable strategies for feeding the family fast--and well.

We liked the menu planning concept of having four core dishes to save time and please picky palates:

I have four core dishes: meatloaf, pot roast, roast chicken and meatballs. I prepare the most basic, pared-down version of each dish. By now it is reflexive. I could do it in my sleep. Perhaps I have. My basic roast chicken is covered in oil and sprinkled with kosher salt and paprika, and that’s that.

Every week I make at least one of those dishes and leave it in the back of the fridge to do emergency duty, as in: “I am not eating anything stuffed with spinach. That’s disgusting.” And like a great friend, it never fails me in a crisis. It can be reheated as a meal, sliced for sandwiches, diced for a pasta sauce and used with cheese to fill a tortilla or a twice-baked potato.

Mom Puts Family On Her Meal Plan