Life is messy. It’s busy and hectic. And even though there are still only twenty-four hours in the day, we’ve added more and more to our lives. It seems like we are literally running from one activity to another. How do we keep our lives organized and manageable?
Technology
Office 365 is one program that can truly help. Not only can it help you, but it can help your entire household. As the C.O.P. (Chief Operating Parent) of your home you can have everyone coordinate their calendars. Additionally, you can all access Excel. Better yet, everyone can access the same data on their own devices.
Save the Date
The calendar is very important to any family. People are heading in opposite directions at almost all times of the day. Record your work schedules, appointments and repeating activities like gymnastics and cello lessons. Look at each day and plan your menu accordingly. If the day is particularly busy, that may be the perfect day to put dinner in the crock pot before leaving for work. Then send everyone an email invitation in Outlook and they can R.S.V.P for dinner.
Keep a Record
After dinner is over, you can stop the old “It’s NOT my turn to do the dishes” fight before it starts. Can you say Chore/Allowance spreadsheet? Why else would a twelve year old care about spreadsheets? If your tween likes money, this would be the perfect opportunity to teach the budget lesson in black and white. Or, use colors like red to show when the budget isn’t balancing so well. You could get fancy and have the payments shown in correlation to the appropriate chores. You could even mark chores successfully completed. Or not. However that may work out for you and your tween.
Android phones, as well as iPhones and iPads seem to work well with this program. There are system requirements, of course, for your laptop and home computer. From those devices, you can coordinate everyone’s contacts, so if you are arranging a sleepover or reminding people to send Grandma a nice thank you note, you can make sure everyone has the correct contacts.
Merge Your Lives
Your work life and home life can seamlessly integrate, as well. Need to leave the office a little early for that recital? It can be easily recorded on your shared calendar. Can’t take the kids to the bus stop one morning because of an early meeting? Make sure to put that on the calendar and then ask someone else to schedule for that activity.
Life really is busy. You can tame your schedule and make it seem as though you have more hours in the day. Stop forgetting to do things because you are so busy. Start knowing you are in the right place at the right time, and with the right kid. You might get so organized that you can even sleep a full eight hours at night. Put it on your calendar.