How I Used the Apartment Binder in Buenos Aires
Hi, I'm Emily and I have ADHD. One of my most helpful coping mechanisms to combat my ADHD is keeping things organized. If you've been following me for a while, you know I created a Home Binder back in 2020 when we moved into our house. I shared it on the internet and it went viral, you guys loved it! I had people constantly asking me to sell a version of it, so I created one and have a download for it on my site. Since then, I also had people asking about apartment versions of it. When we lived in apartments, I had versions of this to keep myself organized, so I created the Apartment Binder. The problem was when I created it, I didn't then have a way to use it because I wasn't living in an apartment. Well, we have been living in an apartment in Argentina since June so I've been able to put the Apartment Binder to the test while we've been here. Since I now have first hand experience with it, I figured I would walk you through how to set it up.
How I used the Apartment Binder in Buenos Aires | Setting Up the Binder
First, you need to download the Apartment Binder from the shop and print it out. One of my favorite things about this is you can pick which pages you want to print and which pages you don't. Since we're living in corporate housing, our apartment set up isn't the same as a traditional apartment so I'm able to select only the things we need. Luckily, we have a printer at home in Tennessee as well as in Argentina, but it can be overwhelming to print these at home. Luckily there are places like UPS, FedEx, etc. that will print things for you at relatively low cost.
Because we aren't here that long and I didn't want to get a whole binder for this, I went and got one of my favorite little books that I've used for a bunch of social stories at a local store. There are little plastic pages on the inside of it. They come apart and you can put pages inside of them. It works great for this modified small Apartment Binder. After gathering all of my supplies, I taped the cover to the front. This page could go easily in the front sleeve of a traditional binder too. I used clear packing tape to cover it multiple times as kind of a DIY lamination. I always end up getting bumps, which is super obnoxious, but it still works. Then, like I said, there are plastic sheets on the inside that separate sections and you can put pages inside of them. Obviously, if you're just using a traditional binder, you just need to hole punch the pages and put them into the binder, but I like showing different ways of doing this because not everyone wants, has access to or can afford a binder.
How I used the Apartment Binder in Buenos Aires | What’s in the Binder
Now let's talk about what's actually inside of this binder. First, there's the amenity information. We don't have a ton of amenities here that I need to put information down for, but we do have family visiting. I want to put information about the pool, laundry room, where to get the coins for the laundry, how to access the pool and what you need for the pool so they are able to reference everything in one convenient place.
The next section is changes made. If you're doing a bunch of changes to your apartment, this is where you want to keep all of that information. We really did not make changes besides taping stuff to the walls, all of which will come down when we leave, but I am still noting that so I can reference back to it later. I also put a line in here about who approved the changes and the date of the approval, because it's always good to be able to reference back to stuff when you're moving out of a place so you're not stuck with any charges. If someone challenges you on a change you made, it's really nice to have that in writing and have that confirmation easily accessible.
The next section is maintenance requests. This section is really important because you need to keep track of when you request for things to be taken care of in your space, and how long it takes them to address those issues. We've had multiple things while staying in this apartment we have requested to be taken care of, and it's taken a few weeks for each thing to be addressed. Having all of the information, including the dates, written down is crucial so if there are any issues when we leave, I can reference back to this.
At the end of the day this binder, especially for an apartment, is going to really help you with getting your security deposit back and keeping track of everything. You have the ability to send all the information to your landlord with dates attached so there are no discrepancies when you leave. Hopefully this will help you in your next apartment like it has helped us! You can find this, as well as the Home Binder, in the shop.
