I was reorganizing our hall closet when I came upon the Home Owner’s Journal. I remember buying it when we first moved into our house. It seemed like it might help in keeping track of stuff we would do to the house. Well, it’s now been over six years and there is nothing written in this thing. Somehow it got lost in all the mounds of paper work that just kept getting stacked on top of it for several years.

The Home Owner’s Journal is made so that you can keep track of any improvements or modifications that you do to your home. Every part of the house is covered. There’s a section where you can attach the paint swatch or daub some paint so that you can have a record of what paint color you used in a particular room. There are lines that specifically help you record what contractor was hired for a room remodel. There are grids for drawing out diagrams of rooms and for the lawn & garden if you want to plan or keep track of  what you plant in your yard. All areas have lines where you can write in your costs and every page has a notes section so you can leave even more details for yourself.

It is limiting in a way because you only have certain pages dedicated to specific areas in your home. But, if you use it as your “Final Draft” it shouldn’t be an issue. This gives you an excuse to have another journal just for sketching out your ideas about what you will do to a certain area. (Like you need an excuse)

Most things are itemized similarly for every part of the home, it might help you not miss something while you are remodeling or upgrading. Plus, there are some helpful tips included for standard maintenance like keeping your furnace in top shape and how to measure your floor for carpet and your windows for coverings.

I probably bought this on a whim. Any journal will do to keep track of your home improvements. The only thing this might offer is a prompt in a particular area that you might not have thought of yourself like retailer info, cost per unit, warranty info, and model/lot number info. The back cover has a pocket where you can store receipts and the like. One thing that would greatly improve this, and something that I have found myself adding to more and more of my notebooks, is the addition of tabs so that I can find a section easier and faster.

So far the only things I’ve written in it are when I changed the fluorescent bulbs in the garage, the re-grouting of my shower in the master bath, and the new sink a friend installed in the hall bath. That’s just in the last month. We have some plans to move things around in the near future in our bedroom and the kitchen. We shall see if this journal is employed in the planning.