Organizing Your Autism Family

In January my six month subscription with List Plan It will come to an end. I found the site over the summer and spent days printing out forms to prepare for the new school year. My son was moving on to Middle School and taking bus transportation, which would limit my physical contact with the school. It is written in his IEP that there be a communication notebook.

Previously in Elementary School I had supplied two forms that the teacher bound into a notebook. This went back and forth daily for recording of information. At List Plan It there are forms for anything and everything you could think of. The site is organized into sections. There are some that non subscribers have access to, which helps in making the decision to subscribe that much easier.

The areas include student planning, family matters, meal planning, memories record, home management, personal interests, travel planning and several other sections. There is also a new section to see all the wonderful newly created lists. These forms or lists are clicked to open and download into the PDF format. These can be filled out and saved with the data, plus there are buttons/icons to the left of the page for members to utilize. I prefer to print the forms plain and stock up on them in a folder for future use. There is a nice description next to the listing for each form or list. In the new section it is also mentioned which sub section the list is categorized under.

Immediately I found the contact record, printed out numerous copies and started utilizing them right away due to issues with the new school. On each page were two forms to write details on. There is no perforation for these to be cut, plus I like having the regular sized paper in my folders. I used the contact record form to log the names of the school officials I was contacting.

The contact record has date, problem/topic, contact, phone, results of discussion, action needed/taken and a larger paragraph on whether person was helpful or not. I have several pages of these forms in the IEP folder for this school year. There were two items missing from this form that would make it super beneficial and that is the time of call and who placed the call. I had to add this in at the top and find it very important to note for my records whether I initiated the call or received a response back and the time for either is a necessity to have on record.

You can request forms or lists to be created. I had a daily communication page that listed day to day, snack, lunch, notes with a small section at the top left corner for bus, drill and assembly. These could be checked off and there was a line for data to be entered. For the therapies section of the form OT, PT, Speech and Adaptive PE are listed with boxes for information to be filled in.

The bottom portion of the document is notes from home. I printed several out and put in the backpack for teacher. I had included one from Elementary School and that is the one the teacher chose to utilize. I hope at the next IEP meeting to have related therapies interested in filling out this daily communication form.

Some of the other forms I utilized and printed out include:

Yearly Expenses Worksheet, School Lunch Planner, Summer Camp Friends, Utilities Quick List, Bank/Credit Card Information, School Information (this lists teacher, bus driver, principal, telephone numbers and email), Friends & Family Email List, Growth Tracker, Medications Tracker, Back to School Planner, Home Fire Safety Planning, Responsibility List Tween, Daily Reminders, Pet Health Journal, Website Favorites List and so much more.

This site is an oasis for the list lover who wants to keep their household organized and prepare for the upcoming events, school and camp. The options for lists are endless with new ones available all the time. This is well worth the subscription rate of $29.95 for one year or 3 moths for $9.95. There are over 350 lists to get your household organized and planned for the future.

I have the Internet Password Organizer™ that is spiral bound with a thick black cover. There are tab dividers for A-Z. The pages are all the same with a Sample of what they look like.

Each of the 122 pages has room for five documented websites with the username, password and notes to be documented. You can organize by category using C for charity sites or B for banking site and S for shopping or you can list each website under their first letter of the Alphabet, whichever works best for the user.

This past week was Black Friday and I went shopping at Walmart.com and could not remember my password. Now it is logged into the Internet Password Organizer. I created a Ning group a few months ago and needed to record a key number for the site. Now I have all my ning groups listed as well as the various email addresses and passwords I have assigned them, all filed under N.

I do lots of internet banking, checking credit scores at the various agencies, paying bills online and checking balances with credit card companies. This as well as my banking information is all handy in my medium sized black book. I also pay my Insurance online and have the relevant information filed under each Company name.

I have several email addresses that I utilize for various reasons with most of them accessed through Yahoo since I have not used Outlook Express in years. For me to have to log out of one account to wait for an email with a password link to reset and go through several steps to get a new one or to respond to a password reminder is time consuming.

I can easily flip through the pages of the Internet Password Organizer and be entered into a site in no time at all. This will also come in handy as my thirteen year old son is now getting involved in some websites. I can have all his data listed under his name for easy access.

Websites to print out coupons and others to receive samples are visited on a regular basis. I had to sign up and create an ID, so having them stored makes it easier to visit them more often to get updated materials. This black binder can easily fit into a briefcase. Besides the A-z section there are pages for data related to ISP Info, License Manager, Home Network and several blank notes pages at the end for other related data that needs to be saved and stored for safe keeping.