It’s October and already I am feeling the stress of trying to juggle school, activities, family time, birthdays, vacations, doctor appointments and everything else that goes along with being C.E.O. of the family.
I would say that I am a very organized person. I have my family schedule committed to memory; have various calendars and lists of lists all over the house. These are the tools that I use to help me keep some sanity in my life.
As a young girl, I used to ask for a calendar every year for Christmas. During the quiet of Boxing Day, I used to transcribe all of the birthdays from the previous year’s calendar to the new glossy pages. Birthdays were written in red pen and anniversaries in black. School assignments always were written in blue.
A calendar isn’t sufficient for tracking my family of five, but as the New Year approaches, I need to find something to keep us on track.
Here are some of the options that I am exploring. Maybe you have an idea? Perhaps you can suggest some pros and cons of the ones I am exploring? What do you use to keep your life on track?
Cozi
Cozi is a digital organizer that allows you to track each family member’s calendar. The calendars can be consolidated and viewed on one master document or individually. Email reminders can be set as well as the option to email calendars to other members of the family.
Grocery lists, to do lists and even a family journal are all stored and easily accessed by any member of your family using the family password. But don’t worry. Your ten year old won’t be able to amend anything on the list. That power only rests with account holder.
What I love:
- Emailing capabilities
- Everyone can access and view the calendar
- Colour coded entries
- The grocery list separates into categories: Grocery and Wholesale
- App available for smart phones
- Links with existing calendar like Microsoft Outlook
- It’s free!
MomAgenda
I came across these beautiful agendas at Chapters. While I embrace my iphone as readily as the next, there is still something about old fashion paper and pen that makes me smile. I will forever be a tactile gal!
The Mom Agenda has everything you’ll need to keep your family organized this year. Including pages for you to jot down and keep track of your favourite websites, books, movies, and music. There is even a section for fashionistas to track all things sartorial.
Vacation and party planning are made easy with sections dedicated to organizing every detail to ensure things go smoothly.
Marcelle loves this and even blogged about it a year ago on this site.
What I love:
- The section for medical information and tracking illness. With three boys I am always in and out of the doctor’s office for one reason or another.
- Page refills are easily obtained at retailers and online
- The paper quality and the cover selections are simply gorgeous
- The calendar is 17 months
- An app version is available with the same chic aesthetic for $4.99
More Time Moms Family Organizer
This large desktop calendar is the best selling and original “mom” organizer. It would be at home on a kitchen counter nook or near the front door. It is a definitely a throw back to the traditional calendar and coloured pens of my youth but I am not sure how efficient it would be for my life right now.
What I love:
- Extra large calendar squares for writing lots of information, no need to abbreviate
- Stickers to mark important dates
- Pockets to store bills, permission slips, coupons, forms, etc.
- To do lists, recipes and kids chore chart are among the extra features
- When buying off the website a $2 discount is given making the price $15.99
Smart Phones, Outlook/Entourage
Currently this is what I am using. I colour code my Entourage calendar and import it to my iphone. I use the notes app to keep track of grocery lists and to do lists. I am sure that there exists a plethora of apps to choose from that could make these tasks easier but it’s finding the time to sift through all of the apps available on the market.
What I love:
- It’s familiar and I don’t have to take time to learn a new program or hand write my important dates and schedule in a traditional organizer.
Help a girl out! What do you do to keep track of all things family?
While I do love my iphone for everything else, it just isn’t practical to store everything there, because I’m not the only one making entires on the calendar. My husband needs to write in the many frequent dates that he will be travelling out of town, and of course that throws in another layer of mass confusion to our already hectic schedule.
We use the big Mom’s calendar – it has magnetic strips and goes on the side of our fridge – and EVERYTHING goes on there. If it’s not there, then I can’t be held accountable if something gets missed!
I thought that I could make the switch to the online capabilities of apps on the iphone but it turns out that was an epic fail! Pen and Paper is what works best for us it seems.
Your scheduling sounds like mine! I like the attitude though – if it ain’t on the calendar it’s not my problem if I don’t do it/forget about it!
I am thinking that I am a pen and paper gal too. There is something so easy about it.
I am a fan of MomAgenda myself…but also have to use an online calendar so that my partner can keep track. He is 100% digital while I prefer writing things down. At my age, it helps me remember things better! So I have a combo smart phone / fridge calendar system that works for us as well as the nanny and the kids!
I have a kiddie calendar on the fridge which I like to use for their school dates and special birthdays. Plus, I like that the boys are learning some organization techniques.
I am leaning toward the Mom Agenda. And really, how pretty are they!?!?
I’m so old school, I use two paper calendars. One is for the cute cartoons: Sandra Boynton’s Mom’s Calendar. It comes with stickers. I like stickers. The kids write in their own events on that one, so it also doubles as a teaching tool. And for me, I will not part from my filofax. I love the ritual you describe above, Beth-Anne. I use New Year’s Day to transfer all the birthdays from the old to the new year. I like this redundancy. The so-called efficiency of electronic organizers does not appeal to me. Pen and paper any day. Alas, it is not very portable, but since it sits on my desk and I sit here all day, too, it’s not usually an issue. Also, I recently painstakingly transcribed a lot of information from the kids’ files at the doctor’s office into my iphone (I HATE typing on that thing) and then it all got deleted. I was not best pleased.
Judging by the comments it’s 3 for 3 in favour of the old fashion pen and paper. Hello, all you techies, where are you?