Organized Home

Consider this tapestry, my cardfile.

Yes, it is time to assemble our cardfile. We've gotten up early, marked out Activity Lists, and begun to flirt with the concept of a Basic Week Plan. In the ABC of SHE, "C" is for Card File--and here we go!

As we make out our cards, we'll look at the issues one-by-one. First, Anatomy 101: the cards themselves.

No secret here. You use multi-colored 3-by-5 file cards to create the heart of the SHE home management system. Each card will contain the following information:

• Frequency
• Time
• Estimate
• Job name and description
• Skipped:

Start with your Activity list. Choose a job, and write the job name (Mop Kitchen Floor) in the center of the card. You may add descriptive information (Use Magic Mop and clean covers, white vinegar on hardwood) to make it easier to delegate the job.

In the upper-left-hand corner, assign a frequency to the job: daily, weekly, seasonal, yearly. In the upper-right-hand corner, estimate the time necessary to complete the job. And at the bottom, write "Skipped:"--here is where you'll make pencil checkmarks each time you skip this job. Remember, two checks, and you must do the card!

Weekly Card

That's the bare bones, now for the bells and whistles!

The Color Controversy

Pam and Peggy grew their cardfile system over several years, and along the way, a few points have veered here and there around the compass face. One of these is the use of color.

In Sidetracked Home Executives, Pam and Peggy used color to indicate job frequency. Daily cards were yellow, weeklies were blue, monthly cards were green. Pink cards had a totally different purpose: they were "personal" cards, while white cards held data and yearly tasks.

By the time P&P published "The Happiness File", they'd begun to push the color connection further. Now different colors began to indicate different functions. Volunteer work, or paid work, or social, or prayer--color could stand for all of these areas.

At this point, the CEO noticed something: since we already have an entry on our cards for frequency, why not harness that color tool for a different purpose?

So she did. Color, in CEO's cardfile, designates type of task. Yellow cards are housekeeping cards, whether the jobs are dailies, weeklies or monthlies. Green cards hold work and writing projects. Blue cards ruled my life during our homeschool years, and now stand for home decorating and home improvement projects (yay! an empty nest!) White cards hold information, list contents of storage boxes and tell me when to back up my computer. Pink cards are still "personal"--haircuts and manicures and sort-the-wardrobe cards are pink. Orange cards help me prepare for the holiday season and entertaining.

Using color to distinguish between different types of functions dovetails neatly with the Basic Week Plan. Yellow cards are divided between cleaning days. Green "money" and work cards go to Desk Day, pink cards to Free Day. Using color, I see and sort my tasks according to the BWP.

This is not SHE-orthodoxy, but it works! Think color as you build your cardfile. The tool will serve you well, helping you juggle job and home and school and church and family: all the colors of your rainbow life.

How Many Jobs Can Dance On The Head Of A 3-by-5?

With publication of "Get Your Act Together", Pam and Peggy broke with the one-job-per-card rule. Now they advocate putting all your kitchen jobs, say, on one card. With publication of GYAT, a raging controversy arose among old-time SHEs.

Some love the new spare, uncluttered look of many-jobs-per-card. "After all," they say, "it was so discouraging to see so many cards every day!" Other SHEs were outraged. "What? I love filing each and every card--gives me encouragement and a good feeling to tuck that baby away!" This camp pointed out that if you group jobs on one card, what do you do when you only finish some of them?

Both sides are right. It's up to you to decide where you fall. Do you want one card, listing all related jobs, for simplicity? Do you need the extra encouragement and/or motivation of one job per card?