Creating Categories

To have a category list show up on your sidebar you will need to have posts for them to link to.
When you are in your Customize page and if you look to the bottom right of this box it says "Labels for this post:" I added Labels that I thought pertained to your life. Now look on your Sidebar and you'll see Tammy's Categories and the list of Labels.
As you add more posts about these things you will only add one Label to each post so they will be separated.
I'll add another post to show you this. So click on My Family in the sidebar and just the post with the My Family label will show up.

You can also keep posts hidden by not publishing them and they will be saved as drafts in your Edit Post tab.

Just play around with the different elements and you will soon learn how to do it.

You can also Google different things you want to do and read instructions for changes etc.