My prayer binder started when I stumbled on this amazing video on YouTube from Gina Garland.
But let's take a quick walk-through of how I set up my prayer binder. I have all the links listed on the resources tab above if you want to see exactly what I use in my own binder.
I bought a half sized binder so that it would easily fit into my Bible tote bag and be easy to grab and go. Full size binders kind of make me crazy, and these half binders are cute and practical!
filler paper
hole punch
tabbed dividers
You'll need the right sized filler paper for your binder and a hole punch and scissors. You'll also need tabbed dividers. You can use stick-on tabs, paper dividers with tabs, or the full plastic dividers. Sheet protectors are also nice, but I only use them at the beginning of each section. Most of my prayers and thoughts are simply hand written on filler paper.
Then you get to add the fun stuff in! Most of this I already had, but some I've added as I've picked items up from stores on sales or clearance. You can use things like washi tape, date stamp, stickers, flags, cards, anything that adds some fun and color to your journal because you'll be looking at it day after day for hopefully years to come!
So gather all that stuff, and then come back for the next steps to set your journal up. Be sure to hop over to see
Gina's video, and also watch a
video of a chat I had with my sister-in-law about her prayer notebook!
Questions some have asked:
How many tabs will I need?
That depends on how many people you want to pray for specifically.
If you have a large family, you'll need to figure if you are going to pray for each person individually, or combine some, or just pray for your family. (See the third question, below.)
If you want to set up your binder similar to mine, you'll need 15 tabs, plus one for each immediate family member you are praying for. Since I have 4 other people in my family, I used 19 tabs total.
BUT, I didn't buy that many dividers, I used a mix of the post it tabs and the plastic dividers.
You can set this up in a full sized binder with what you have on hand.
You could buy the half sized binder and cut your own tabbed dividers and even your own filler paper (cardstock or dollar store posterboard for the dividers, and cut off the margin on regular notebook paper, cut to size and re-punch new holes to fit.)
If you are crazy in love with all things half-sized you'll want to purchase new, and then it can run around $15-$25 dollars.
If you are on a really tight budget right now, make it work with what you have. It's worth it!
I have a big family, how do I pray for everyone daily?
If you have a big family, there are a few options:
- Pray for each member individually (if you do this, you will have to adjust how long you are praying for each person--we'll get into that later. It is do-able though!)
- Combine family members into one tab. You can combine all the boys, all the girls, all the married, etc.
- Pray for your children under one tab for all. Under a Children tab you can list your children each on one piece of paper and pray through the pages daily. (If you do this, it might be hard to pray for each without allotting more time for this section... unless you plan to pray for one child on Mondays, another on Tuesdays, etc.)
If you want to browse some of the fun half sized items on Amazon, click here.
*This post contains an affiliate link to Amazon for the book and binder items. No other links are affiliate.
