Family

Growing up, I was always a good student. I paid attention, I studied, I did my homework, and I got good grades. As my brothers entered high school, they became annoyed that my parents expected them  to get the same grades as their older sister; which they didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, my brothers are incredibly smart. Both could run circles around me with their discussions and theories about politics, physics, exercise science and mathematics. There is only one difference between us that I can attribute my good grades to; I was extremely organized and they were well, not.

In college, my obsessive organizational skills were put to even greater use. Each course had it’s own binder. Sections were organized with colorful tabs, when I got home I rewrote out the notes taken in class so the pages weren’t littered with doodles and chicken scratch in the margins, and my highlighters were put to good use (and were color coordinated).

After PA school though, when I fell into the part-time working mommy routine, my organizational skills fell to the wayside. Frankly, for the past four years our household has run on a day-to-day (and sometimes an hour-by-hour) what-needs-to-be-done-right-now schedule.

Despite being in my fifth year as a police wife and knowing full-well the schedule changes and the over-time hours make family schedules difficult, I have always taken a day-by-day approach to our family calendar, thinking this was the only way for our family.  I’ve (repeatedly) had discussion with a close friend of mine, that sometimes I wonder if it would be easier for our family if I were to either work full-time or stay at home full-time because while I am blessed with the opportunity to work part-time and reap the benefits of both worlds, I also struggle with the pitfalls of both.  One of the difficulties I struggle with is our constantly changing schedules and the chaos it sometimes brings. For example, we quickly learned as MJ started his career that his schedule will never be “9 to 5” like most working husbands. Hell, it won’t even be 7pm to 7am or 4pm to 12pm on a consistent basis because there will always be mandatory over-time, court dates, training or a late dispatch call that will change his schedule.  And although my schedule is set at working 3 days a week, we are constantly asking each other ‘what hours do you work this week? Who is watching the kids tomorrow? Can you drop the kids off at my mom’s house in the morning before court and I’ll pick them up on my way home?”  

Exhausting? You betcha.

Since our schedules were a disorganized mess, the rest of family life followed suit. We were that couple that would scavenge through the pantry and say ‘damn. We have no food. Sweetie, load up the kids. We need to go grocery shopping.’  No grocery list, no planning meals for the week, no coupons, nada. As we paced the aisles of the grocery store we would call out over our shoulders (and over the roar of screaming toddlers) “how about lasagna?” or “hey babe, do we have any eggs?” Ultimately we would return home to find that we had missed something important (like toilet paper or milk) or that we had bought our third bottle of BBQ sauce that would be pushed to the back of the pantry and never see the light of day again.

Meals were sporadic to say the least. We tried, really we did, to cook dinner regularly but with MJ’s  schedule and my hatred for cooking, it didn’t work out so well.  We would hit a stride and cook 3-4 days in a row, pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, and then something would happen that would send us in a tailspin of fast-food runs and kid-friendly restaurants.

Clearly, our spontaneous eating habits weren’t good for our wallets… or our waistlines.

For years, Marty has nagged urged me to cut down on my take-out eating habits, claiming that we were overspending.  But I’ll be honest, I thought he was exaggerating.  Sure, I would grab a hot chocolate (I’m a kid at heart who hates coffee) in the morning on my drive to work or I would run through the drive-thru on my lunch break, but I was always cost conscious. While other people would get a value meal averaging $5.50 or so, I would buy 2-3 items off the dollar menu, and was proud of myself for doing so. How much of a dent could two or three dollars really make in our finances?

This leads me to my next confession. One that I am embarrassed to admit, but it deserves to be mentioned. MJ and I have been married for over six years, have two (and soon to be three) children, own a home, and have two vehicles…. but we do not have a family budget.  Much like our meal planning, we’ve taken a laid-back (yet responsible) approach to our finances. Aside from student loans, we don’t have any debt and our bills/mortgage/insurance have always been paid, in-full and on time.  We have some money put away in each of the kids’ college funds and despite MJ being laid off for 19 months a few years ago, we have managed to put some money away into our savings account.  We are careful not to make big purchases (ie. new furniture, new roof for the house, new windows) until the previous one is completely paid off. However, we never had a distinctly written and calculated budget that we adhered to.  We always discussed having a written budget, saying “we really should have a budget.”  But the step of moving from “we should” to “we have” never materialized.  As long as we were out of debt and slowly putting money into our savings, I/we figured we were doing well.

A few weeks ago, my friend Jen mentioned how she was putting together a household binder in order to help her home run smoothly and efficiently.  Initially, I thought she was crazy (sorry Jen, I did).  Why in the world would I need a binder to remind me to cook dinner, clean my house, and pay my bills? (Jokes on me, because clearly I needed it more than most!). It wasn’t until I started researching household binders and talking more with Jen about the concept that I got on board with the idea.

(Side note: I was amazed to find the number of other women who use a household binder. Simply googling and searching ‘household binder’ on Pinterest provided me with an abundance of information).

Soon, I found myself in my glory at Office Depot picking out a colorful binder, vibrant dividers, matching pockets for certain categories and clear plastic covers for important documents.  Marty watched in awe as I spent an entire nap-time printing off templates from various websites, organizing dividers and asking otherwise foreign questions that I had never asked him before; “what’s the password for the Visa account? Do we pay the cable bill with the Discover card or Visa?”  

The next day, I spent over three hours researching and recording our finances for the past two months; what we brought in and what we spent.  (We rarely pay for anything in cash, so our credit card records and bank statements made it easy to look at our spending habits for the past two months). I used a budgeting template that I had found online and filled in what I could. I was then able to use that as a rough draft in making a document that better suited our finances (ie. a spot for student loans, home improvement projects, etc).  I was horrified (and disgusted) to add up the totals we spent on take-out and restaurants in the past two months.

At one point I turned to Marty and said “Ok, I am only going to say this once and because I am going to say it, I think I deserve to be spared a lecture….  You were right. Eating out, even just $3 here and there, really does add up!”

He smiled and said ‘I’m glad you realize it now.’

(But I should mention that the smile quickly vanished when he asked what the exact total was. Seriously, it was shameful.)

Since that day, our household binder has found a permanent place on our counter. With it’s presence, I am proud to say that our home has actually been cleaner, we have not eaten out once (not even a hot chocolate on my way to work), we have cooked dinner every night and our schedules are laid out ahead of time so we know exactly where each of us (and the kids) will be each day of the week. Our budget for the month of March, although not yet complete, is under construction and I finally feel like my days spent at home are much more organized and less chaotic then before.

While I’m extremely optimistic that this will help us stay organized and ‘on track,’ I am not naive enough to think that there won’t be days weeks in which we fall of the metaphorical wagon. Hell, with a pending move, MJ’s new job, and a baby due in less then five weeks, I’m pretty much counting on it.  But at least I can feel somewhat relieved and comforted in knowing that we finally have a plan to fall back on that will help us get back into the cleaning, cooking, and being financially responsible grown-up mode.