Simplify Your Family's Emergency Preparedness

Why You Need a Family Documents
Cheat Sheet

person holding tablet with title page from family information summary of information hub

Sometimes you just need one social security number, or the name of a pediatrician. In those instances, you don’t want to sift through an entire folder to find that one piece of information. That’s where this family documents cheat sheet comes in handy.

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A quick reference guide for important documents is something every family needs

You can probably identify with at least one of these situations:

  • Usually when you're needing a social security number, it's not just for one child - it's for every member of the family.

  • August just keeps getting more hectic, and here you are again trying recall the the pediatrician's phone number for school and sports forms.

  • You are filling out yet another driver permission slip for a school activity that requires your driver's license number.

  • Every time you call the attendance office to excuse your child's absence or get them out of school early, you have to provide your child's student ID.

  • Grandpa and Grandma are on kid duty for a couple of days. They know the typical schedule and don't need a special list of instructions, but having basic house codes and passwords could prove helpful.

This section of the Information Hub is all about convenience.  It’s a quick reference for information that you need to look up often.

Because of this, the Family Section is the most often referenced section in your day to day.

 

I cannot tell you how much this will add to your efficiency in your role as a parent who wears a million hats.  

Bonus: You can also make it available to the rest of the family if you’re comfortable with that!

What's included in the Family Documents Cheat Sheet PDF

1 – Household Info

 
  • WIFI
  • Computer Password
  • Address
  • Mailbox
  • Garage Code
  • Door Keypad Code
  • Hide-A-Key
  • Home Security System

2 – Safety (Date Last Reviewed/Checked)

 
  • Smoke/CO Alarms
  • Fire Extinguisher
  • Fire Safety
  • Power Outages
  • How and When to Shut Off Water
  • How and When To Shut Off Gas
  • Evacuation Plan

3 – Family ID Info

 
  • Birthdate
  • Social Security #
  • Driver’s License #
  • Driver’s License Expiration Date
  • Student ID #
  • Other

4 – Family Personal Info

 

  • Phone #
  • Lock Screen Password
  • Electronic Device
  • Lock Screen Password

5 – Important Contacts

 

  • Name
  • Contant Info
  • Notes

6 – Vehicles

 

  • Years/Make/Model
  • License Plate #
  • VIN #
  • Notes

A Day in the Life ...

Since I have completed our Family Summary 3 months ago, I have used it more than 8 times!

  1. The last week of school I was calling kids in late, out early, and/or out for the whole day.  Gotta love high school and middle school, right? Each of those calls, I referenced my Family Summary sheet for my kids’ student ID #s.
  2. My youngest made Little League All Stars, so we had to provide his birth certificate for age verification.
  3.  We had to fill out new medical papers for Little League All Stars, including medical insurance and pediatrician info (I have these things listed under Contacts on the second page of our Family Summary).
  4. My oldest daughter and I went to tour a college campus and unexpectedly got to sit down with the financial advisor at the school.  We needed my daughter’s social security # in order to get a financial aid projection for college next year. 
  5. Since I drove my personal car to girls camp for our church, I needed to provide my driver license #, insurance policy #, and license plate #.
  6. I called the DMV for my daughter while she was at work, and they needed her license plate # before they would give me any information. Since her car was gone, I was soooooooo glad I had it right here, especially after holding for over 2 hours to talk to a live person!
  7.  My oldest son registered for football at his high school and needed a bunch of medical information filled out, including when he got his last tetanus shot. Call me crazy, but I didn’t have that date memorized! However, I have been around long enough to know that that’s a common question on forms like these, and had decided to make one of the editable columns in our Family Summary be the date of last tetanus shot. This saved me from even having to open the scanned copy of his immunization records (although, I could have, and it would have been right there in the folder, had I needed to).
  8. My oldest daughter needed a blood draw, and we decided it was time to put her contact information in the system, rather than mine. I was doing the pre-checkin from my phone the night before, and they required a copy of her driver’s license. I literally downloaded her scanned license right there from my Info Hub folder on my phone and uploaded it to their website.

With school starting up again next month, I don’t even want to begin to think about how many times I’ll need to reference the Family Summary. But dang, am I glad I have it on standby!

 

The time it took to get all that information typed out has already paid itself off in the time it has saved me when I’m in a time crunch. Can you imagine how much time it will save me throughout the rest of my life?!  Especially with this growing crew!👇

Picture of a large family with lots of kids

This Family Quick Reference PDF IS Just the icing on the cake

This quick reference really is designed to serve as a bonus for the sake of expediting the process of locating information.  

 

You would be doing yourself a huge disservice if you skipped the Family Summary.  Take it from someone who knows!  I did this section LAST, and was so disappointed in myself for leaving it to last.  After experiencing the real life application of this section, I recommend that this is the section that people START with, when filling out their Information Hub.

 

The Family Section is basically a compilation of the most often referenced info from the Personal, Household, and Vehicle sections.  To get a better idea of how comprehensive the Personal, Household, and Vehicle sections are, you can check them each out at the linked posts.

Or just go check out the complete Information Hub and dive right in!  You can complete the sections in any order, on whatever timeline works best for you.  Just start! 

 

The time you spend filling this out will save you so much time in the future, you’ll wonder how you ever survived without it!

  • Household Info

  • Safety

  • Family ID & Personal Info

  • Important Contacts

  • Vehicles

  • All in a fillable, pdf file

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