If something happened tomorrow, could anyone find anything?
For many households, the honest answer is no. The will is somewhere, the insurance policies are in an email, the passwords live in one person’s head, and the list of medications is on the fridge — until it isn’t.
A common fix is a thick all-in-one binder, and a common result is a binder that never gets finished. It asks for everything at once, in no particular order, and the pages that do get filled in quietly go out of date.
The Life Admin Bundle is twelve finished products that between them hold the paperwork side of running a household — plus one new workbook that tells you how ready that record is, what has gone stale, and what to fill in next.
What’s in the bundle: the twelve products
Each of these is a complete Ardent Workshop product, sold on its own. You get all twelve, for 65% off their $224.40 combined price.
The record of your affairs
- Estate & Life-Admin Binder — the documents, accounts, insurance, contacts, medical notes and final wishes a household keeps in one place, plus a household reference for shutoffs, utilities and routines.
- Household Operations Manual — how the home itself runs: the home summary a sitter needs first, systems and shutoffs, utilities, a maintenance schedule, an “if I’m away” page and trusted vendors.
- Everyday Household Legal & Authorization Template Pack — thirteen plain-language templates, each a fillable PDF and an editable Word document, for childcare, pet care, house-sitting, lending and private sales.
What you own
- Home Inventory — a room-first inventory that scores each item’s proof of ownership, estimates actual cash value, checks totals against your policy limits and builds a claim worksheet.
- Kitchen & Pantry Inventory Workbook — writes its own shopping list and use-it-up list, tracks freezer dates and unit prices, and flags what is low, expiring or out.
- Home Maintenance & Warranty Log — flags every appliance In Warranty, Expiring Soon or Expired, tracks repairs and running cost, and carries a seasonal maintenance schedule.
- Vehicle & Auto Records Binder — flags what is due by date and by mileage, counts down registration, insurance and inspection renewals, and computes a loan or lease payoff date.
Health and care
- Medical-Expense Tracker — the year’s medical costs against the deductible and out-of-pocket max, an HSA shoebox, the FSA deadline, and whether costs clear the line for the medical expense deduction.
- Medication & Appointment Tracker — medications, doses, refill timing and appointments, with an at-a-glance page written for whoever helps in a hurry.
- Vital-Signs Tracker — a home vitals log for up to six people, each reading flagged against that person’s own targets.
If something goes wrong
- Emergency Evacuation Readiness Binder — the evacuation plan, a document grab-list, a claims-ready home inventory, insurance, contacts, medical information, a go-bag checklist and utility shutoffs.
- Home Emergency & “If I’m Away” Printables Pack — print-and-fill forms and cut-out cards for the fridge, the binder and a house-sitter’s counter, with a filled worked example.
And the Command Center, which only comes with the bundle
12 products. 48 records that matter. 9 tabs. One answer to “how ready are we?”
The Command Center is a workbook — an .xlsx and a native Google Sheet, with its own one-click “Make a copy” link — that sits above the twelve products as the household’s control file.
The Readiness Scorecard — how ready is this household, in one number
The Scorecard lists the 48 records a household most needs in order, from where the will and the executor’s details are kept to the go-bag and the family meeting place. Each one is mapped to the product, file and tab where it lives, and weighted by how badly someone taking over would need it.
As you fill each record in, you mark it Done, Partial, Not started or N/A. The Scorecard turns those marks into weighted readiness overall, per group, and for the First 48 hours tier — the records a successor needs first — who to call, where the documents are, what medications someone takes, which policy covers the house.
Review dates — so the record cannot quietly go stale
Every record carries a review cadence: every three months for the medication list, every six months for the go-bag, every year for the homeowners or renters policy, and so on. When a record’s last review plus its cadence falls behind today, the Freshness column flags it Review due — and a stale Done counts only as Partial. The score drops until you re-check it, which is the point: a readiness number that never goes down is not telling you anything.
The Fill-First Plan — the next ten, and nothing else
The Fill-First Plan takes everything not yet done, or gone stale, and orders it: First 48 hours records first, then Foundation, then Complete, heaviest first within each. The next ten are shaded, each with the file and tab to open and a rough time for the batch. You never face all 48 at once. The Setup Sequence covers the First 48 hours records in its first two weekend sittings.
Key Dates & Renewals, Which File and the successor letter
- Key Dates & Renewals puts passports, licenses, registrations, policies, warranties and refills in one countdown. Type each date in once, from the file and tab the row names, and it counts the days left and flags Overdue, Act now or OK.
- Which File answers 30 real household situations — a burst pipe, a parent’s ER visit, selling the car, leaving the kids with a sitter — with the file and tab to open first, then next, and what to do there.
- Successor Handoff records one trusted person per group and where the digital and paper copies live. From it and the Scorecard, If You Are Reading This writes a two-page letter for whoever takes over: where to start, the first-48-hours records with their status, who looks after what, and which records are past their review date. Print it and keep it with the binder.
- The Dashboard shows it all on one page: readiness by group and tier, the top three to do next, and the next five renewals.
A limit worth knowing up front
The twelve products are separate files, on purpose — a home inventory and a medication list should not be the same spreadsheet. The Command Center does not read them or link to them. It holds the map of where everything lives and the status you mark on it, and it does the scoring, ordering and flagging from that. Nothing reaches across your Drive or edits another file.
The printed guides
- The Life Admin Map — how the twelve products become one household record, and where to start.
- The Setup Sequence — all 48 records packed into 6 weekend sittings of about two to three and a half hours, roughly 15 hours in total, in the same order as the Fill-First Plan.
- Which File Do I Open? — the 30 situations, printable.
- The Component Index — every product’s files and what each one is for.
- The System on One Page — a one-page wall chart of the four groups and the First 48 hours records.
Who it’s for
- Couples and parents who have realized that one person holds the household’s whole memory.
- Adult children helping an aging parent get the paperwork in order — and wanting the same record for themselves.
- Anyone who started a life binder and stalled partway through.
- Households that already own one of these products and want the rest, plus the file that ties them together.
Try the free version first
Not sure where your household stands? The What Documents Do I Need? checklist is free and ungated — no email, no signup. It tells you which records matter. The bundle is where you keep them, score them and keep them current.
Own it, don’t rent it
Some record-keeping apps are sold as monthly subscriptions. This is one purchase. The workbooks open in Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice, the legal template pack is fillable PDF and Word, and the printables pack is PDF. They are ordinary files, not locked in an app, and all of it is yours to keep.
