The Mission Statement and Cure Binder

The first page of my Cure Binder. It has my mission statement and a few inspiration pictures. On the back is the plan of action for the next 8 weeks printed from this blog entry. The Dry Cleaning coupons came in the mail today, so I tucked them into the inside pocket.

A mission statement is designed to function for a short period of time. I love it as a tool to help focus my activities when I'm executing a multi-faceted project like this. I was introduced to using them this way by Aby Garvey in her Simplify 101 class, Get Organized for the Holidays. (I forget the precise wording of the course title, but you get the idea.)

I've decided to adopt the following formula:

My home will be [qualities or attributes from the interview or any other adjectives you want] so that the people who live here will [feel a certain way or be able to do certain things] because I will have [the actions I'm taking over the next couple of months] by [date] .

To wit:

My home will be clean and pleasant, peaceful and comfortable, organized and tidy (on a daily basis) so that the people who live here will be content, secure, and supported in their activities and goals because (with the help of my family) I will have thoroughly cleaned the dickens out of each room, thought about what supposed to happen in the room and what it needs, and gotten rid of everything that isn't necessary by May 30th, 2011.

Well, for a first pass, I suppose it isn't bad.

source: chez larsson A functional and pleasant laundry room is vital to the goal of supporting our activities!

The idea of setting up a binder to hold all the necessary bits of paper is also from Aby's Holiday course. I've found it invaluable over the past couple of years to help me get through Christmas. Last summer, I also set up a binder for our vacation and it was a fabulous tool to have on hand.

So, seeing as this is my very own hybrid cure, I thought I would adopt these two tools to help carry me through the work of the next two months.

Here's the cover of the binder.

The binder is quite simple: just a regular ol' binder from Staples with a clear "pocket" on the spine and the front (for an insert) and (old) purchased page dividers. A few clear pocket pages and some page protectors are all I need to help make it as functional as possible. Take a look at what's out there for page protectors and customize your binder any way you want. Page inserts which hold business cards for example, may be useful to you. Baseball card holders may be just the thing to hold different paint chip cards.

Here are the divisions. I have 11 all together.
1) Repair worksheets
2) Floor Plans
(Here's a link to BHG's on-line floor plan generator).
3) Reference and Notes (this holds information about vendors and sources for items I may need: things like the phone number for the place I need to call for the foam to upholster a headboard, different prices on bathtub surrounds, a vacuum, and so on.
4-10) Then, I have dividers for each room with the cleaning checklist and the de-cluttering spots behind it as well as other information pertinent to the room in question, like window measurements (should I want to buy fabric for making curtains).
11) At the back, I have a "Progress Report" where I keep track of the pounds I've moved out of the house and a page protector to hold the receipts for the things I've purchased.

I'm using this hideous shade of orange only because that was the colour of the old index card I found.

Actually, you could use just 10 dividers if you put the floor plan of each room behind that room's divider.

I already have a lot of this information filed away already in another binder called my "Home Reference" Binder--I put it together during another of Aby's courses called Paper Clutter. I've transfered what I need over into the "Cure" binder (like the floor plans) so that everything is all in one place.

This is just what works for me: you may prefer a tray, folders, a box, or nothing at all--whatever works for you. But do give some thought to how you might like to capture some of your thoughts and inspiration along the way.

Here's an inspiration image. I decided to collect them and place them on the cover and the Mission statement pages of the binder. I may include some on the cleaning checklist pages as well. This one is on the cover (above).

Source: Jim Howard via Things that Inspire. What I love about this is how lush but simple it is, how colourful, yet still serene.